


Amnesia

by RossettiMucha



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 38,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9147802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RossettiMucha/pseuds/RossettiMucha
Summary: Since Bernie's ignominious return from Ukraine, Serena has had as little contact with her as is possible when they co-lead the same hospital ward. The chapter of her life titled 'Berenice Wolfe' has been firmly closed, and it will not be opened again if she can help it.But when Bernie suffers a head injury, she wakes up believing that Serena is her wife.That's right, it's the terrible 'this is almost definitely not how amnesia actually works in real life' trope we all know and love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In the (paraphrased) words of a great (fictional) man, "Dammit Jim, I'm a lit student, not a doctor!"  
> Let's be clear about that from the off. My medical knowledge is beyond negligible, I don't know how hospitals work, and I certainly don't know the first thing about amnesia outside of convenient and well-loved fan fiction tropes. (Though I suspect that if I did, those tropes would really piss me off with their inaccuracy.)

On a post-Kiev AAU, there is no such thing as ‘family.’ Not in the way they used to mean it, at least. Gone is the ward whose dynamic was the secret envy of the rest of the hospital – warm, welcoming, presided over and nurtured by its two clinical co-leads with an almost parental pride.

Bernie had seen to that.

In its place is the professional equivalent of a very messy divorce. Serena, as the obviously injured party, is backed by her staff unequivocally. They draw ranks around her when Bernie returns, taking her out for drinks and karaoke at Albie’s and bringing her coffee and cream buns when she has a double shift. Bernie’s invitations to these outings, as well as any beverage or snack she might desire, are conspicuous only by their absence.

Bernie is, after all, the one who disrupted their carefully cultivated environment of love and support in favour of the Ukraine. The collective attitude is very much one of ‘if she doesn’t need us, then we don’t need her,’ and she is addressed only when absolutely necessary. Besides, they’ve all known Serena longer, and they saw her behaviour when Bernie was gone. They understand that Bernie’s flight was not for purely professional reasons, and they know how Serena suffered. The ways in which Serena, over the years, has protected all of them with almost maternal fierceness is not forgotten, and they are keen to respond in kind. 

This new version of the AAU family, it escapes no one’s notice, is exactly like the kind of real world family from which they all sought a reprieve. It’s tense and cold and driven by ill-feeling and resentment. It engenders in Serena the same gut twisting discomfort as Elinor’s cold disinterest ( _she shushes the voice that says it could be guilt_.) For Bernie, it is nothing but an apt mirror image of her children turning their backs on her and siding with Marcus. In both cases though, she knows, it’s nothing less than she deserves.

Serena, in the weeks since Bernie’s return, has led the feeling of the ward with her own cloud of desperately feigned apathy. She has not spoken to Bernie on a non-work related matter since the day – and still, she cringes to think about it – she had chased Bernie down on the ward, clinging to her arm like a lost and frantic child. She keeps her distance, and though she is nothing less than professional, she makes it clear to Bernie that anything that was between them is firmly off the table. Intellectually, she knows it’s for the best. 

She’s sure her own heart will pick up the message soon enough.

Bernie, for her part, bows her head and accepts it graciously. Takes the cold shoulders, the routine surgeries, the extra piles of paperwork in her stride. It’s her penance, she knows, and she would do anything to be close to Serena, after so long out of her company. She tries not to mind the attitude of the rest of the staff; she has suffered worse, and as long as Serena is there every day – even if their only interaction is the exchange of patient notes – she feels as though she can endure anything.

Such is the state of AAU for exactly three months after Bernie’s return. Perhaps it would have gone on interminably, a perpetual stalemate of wounded glances and half spoken words, had the red phone not rung at 5.00pm on an otherwise forgettable Tuesday, just as Serena was clocking off shift. 

Raf takes the call, and Serena can tell by the way he is glancing towards the office, that there is something wrong beyond the ordinary. When he edges his way through the half open door, and whispers her name in the same tone one might use to address a spooked horse, Serena suddenly, instinctively, knows what he’s going to say. Her hat falls to the floor unnoticed.

“Bernie.”

//

A car crash. The first responders report that she’d skidded on a patch of black ice and straight into the side of an articulated lorry. Could have happened to anyone, they said. No one’s fault. Serena doubts that’s true. She had always chastised Bernie for driving that stupid little sports car too quickly. Had always joked that it wasn’t the Touring Car championships, that Bernie could afford to slow down just a little, that it wouldn’t matter if she was a mere five minutes late. Or at least, she had when they were still on speaking terms. She paces the ward with a kind of desperate, manic energy as she waits for Bernie to arrive.

They wheel her in, and all Serena can see is blood. It seems to be everywhere, caked in her hair, and drying in flakes in the tiny creases around her eyes and – _God, how can one person have so much blood in their body, where is it all coming from_ \- it’s even running in slow moving rivulets around the shell of her ears, dripping into the gaping collar of her blouse. Serena isn’t sure what colour it was originally – all she can see now is that it’s dyed red. 

She feels as though she’s watching herself from a great distance. She jerks and judders and runs in half speed like a figure on an old reel of film, and she sees herself extend one shaking hand towards Bernie. She tries to smooth down her hair in a futile gesture of comfort, but it’s too sticky and matted to move, and when Serena draws her hand back, her palm is damp with blood. She stares at it in horrified fascination; as though she hasn’t been a surgeon for over 20 years, as though she isn’t elbows deep in viscera and gore on a weekly basis without batting an eyelid. She thinks, distantly, that she might be sick.

“ _Serena_ , we need to move, now!” Raf’s voice cuts through the slow-moving waters of her mind and she blinks. The noise of the ward returns in a rush, as time speeds up once more.

“Page Mr Griffin please Mr di Lucca, I’d like him to assist.” 

Raf looks as though he wants to protest, and Serena knows exactly what he’s going to say – that she shouldn’t operate on Bernie in this state, that he and Ric can do it together – but she’s already moving before he has time to reply, shouting orders she could recite in her sleep as she runs to scrub up. No one but Serena is going to operate on Bernie if she can help it. Ironically of course, the only other surgeon in the entire hospital she’d trust to operate on someone so precious to her is Bernie herself, and she’s – she’s currently – 

The soap slips out of her hands and thuds dully into the metal sink. 

_Get it together,Campbell_. 

She hears the doors of the scrub room swing open behind her, and Ric reaches for an unopened brush, panting as though he’s run all the way from Keller. She concentrates her gaze on her hands, scrubbing under her nails a little harder than necessary. The pain feels good - grounding. She can feel him staring at her. She dreads what she might see if she looks up – pity, or understanding, or condemnation – because she knows whatever it is, will undo her. 

“Serena.”

She shakes her head. Still can’t look at him.

“Ms Campbell,” he tries.

“Ric - if I speak to you right now I will not – not be able - to hold myself together. Can – can you understand that?” She chokes it out in staccato bursts, can feel her chest winding tighter and tighter as she speaks.

“I need to know if you are capable of performing this surgery. I know you and Bernie were… working towards something. That you have feelings for her.”

“Ms Wolfe is a respected colleague.” It sounds weak and pathetic, even to her own ears, and the knot in her chest is creeping up her throat with every word she utters.

“Christ Serena, when she left you were half in love with her! You can’t tell me that you’re wholly unaffected, whatever the status of your relationship now.”

Serena takes a deep breath. Then another. It feels too warm all of a sudden – _has someone turned up the heat? It shouldn’t be this hot_ \- and she wonders if Ric is deliberately trying to psyche her out. “Whatever happened between Ms Wolfe and I, it is at an end. She left. I moved past it. This changes nothing.”

“But Serena –“

“ _This changes nothing_!” She looks up at him then, eyes hard. “Now get scrubbed in, before she bleeds out on the table.”


	2. Chapter 2

Serena eventually apologises to Ric from Bernie’s bedside, still clutching onto her hand like a lifeline. Confesses that she’s not as indifferent as she’d like to appear – that yes, alright, perhaps she is a little… overly fond of Bernie - perhaps she even loves her - and maybe she shouldn’t have performed the surgery, but it all worked out okay in the end, didn’t it? 

He nods sagely, as though he expected nothing less. Serena can see that he knows he is only getting an apology because he allowed her to get her own way, and is grateful that he understands enough of her not to call her on it. 

“Perhaps you should tell her that, when she wakes up. She might need to hear it.”

Serena shakes her head and self-consciously drops Bernie’s hand. It flops, unmoving, on top of the covers, and she pointedly ignores it. “She still left. She’s still the person she was, this time yesterday; and so am I.”

Ric considers her for a moment, as though she is a particularly puzzling surgical quandary, before raising his hands in defeat and backing out of the room. The door snicks closed behind him. 

Serena turns her attention back to Bernie. Studies her. Looks at the hand she has unceremoniously dumped, turned palm up in a facsimile of supplication. Serena snorts and tucks it gently under the blanket. _As if Bernie has ever been so humble as to be supplicant in her entire life_ , she thinks ruefully. 

She looks younger in sleep, but tired, even in rest. The skin under her eyes is purple, and when Serena studies the curve of her jawline – for purely medical reasons, she reassures herself – she notices that it’s beginning to bruise purple to match, all the way up to her temple. Once she’s noticed that of course, she notices all the marks of the accident. She stops looking at the parts of Bernie she’s always wanted an opportunity to examine up close – the soft arch of her eyebrows, the line of the bridge of her nose – and sees only the split in her lip, the row of stitches bisecting her chin. They seem to grow until they take over her entire face, until there is nothing else. The nurses had tried to wash away most of the blood, and Bernie’s hair is golden once more, but it is flat and greasy, and her hairline is still ringed with red. It glares like a false beacon, too bright, and Serena can’t tear her eyes away.

Before she’s quite aware of it, she is out of her chair and dipping a Kleenex in the jug of water on the bedside table. There is nothing in her mind but the desperate knowledge that Bernie looks as though she’s been seriously injured - that she doesn’t look like Bernie should, and if only she could clean her up a little bit, she’d be okay. She dabs frantically at the tidal line of blood until the tissue turn pink and flakes into pieces, but she doesn’t quite get all of it, and she almost wails in frustration when she finds that she has none left to finish the job. 

She falls back into her chair in defeat, and digs Bernie’s hand out from under the covers again. It’s not bruised or swollen like her face, but it doesn’t seem like it belongs to her either. It’s too still and pale, too listless for someone as dynamic as Bernie, so Serena absently bends her fingers into shapes in the hopes that it will seem less uncanny in motion.

Bernie’s fingers twitch, and Serena, lost in thought, jumps as though she’s been burned.

“Bernie? Bernie, can you hear me? It’s Sere – it’s Ms Campbell.”

She studies Bernie’s face, and thinks she sees the tic of an eyebrow. 

“Come on Bernie, can you try and open your eyes for me?” 

She waits with baited breath for almost 30 minutes, but Bernie makes no further movement, and Serena wonders if it was just some sort of involuntary muscle twitch as the anaesthetic wore off. _Maybe she wouldn’t wake up right away, anyway; it has been less than 12 hours since she’d been brought in, no cause for alarm yet – maybe I should just put my head down for a second myself – just a little – it must be late – I’ll have to text Jason to put the bins out, it’s the green bin tomorrow –don’t you dare fall asleep – open your eyes, old girl, come on, don’t fall asleep on Bernie – maybe if I just rest my eyes – I’ll just_ – 

//

Serena becomes dimly aware of a weak but insistent tugging on her hand. For a split second, she thinks she’s in her old bed at her mother’s house, and it’s their cat trying to pull the blanket from her grip in his quest for food; until she remembers that her mother is dead, the cat is most certainly dead, and she’s 51, not 15. Where then? She valiantly tries to drag herself from the depths of sleep, and almost doesn’t manage it, until she becomes aware of the steady beeping of the monitor.

Her head jerks up, and she can feel the tense pull in her neck from sleeping bent _over_ a bed instead of actually _in_ it. She looks down to see Bernie’s hand – still clasped in her own, she’s embarrassed to note – moving of its own accord, squeezing her fingers gently in an effort to rouse her.

She dares to glance at Bernie’s face, and almost cries in relief when she sees that her eyes are open and focussing on her. 

“Hey, you,” Serena whispers softly, forgetting herself momentarily, and Bernie smiles - wide and beatific, and so full of love that Serena’s heart leaps in her chest. 

Except – she can’t do this. Not again. 

She frees her fingers, ignoring the way Bernie’s face falls, and busies herself pouring her a glass of water. 

“Here. Drink this.” It’s said in her best doctor-tone of concern, but Bernie continues to frown as she takes small sips from the plastic cup.

Serena finds that she doesn’t know what to do with herself after that, so she settles for pretending to re-read the notes at the end of the bed. The more the seconds tick by though, the louder the beeps seem, and the warmer the room gets, and Bernie’s confused eyes seem to burn a hole through the side of her head. She watches her own hands quiver around the pages, and Serena is surprised to find that she’s angry – beyond angry, in fact. More furious than she has ever been in her life, it feels like, and she slams the file back into its holder with enough force to make the end of the bed shake. 

Bernie flinches in shock, water sloshing over the sides of the cup.

“What the hell were you _thinking_?” Serena hisses. “How _dare_ you do something so _foolish_? I have told you a thousand times about how you drive that car, but you never listened to me, and now, now you do _this_! You nearly kill yourself, just to take ten minutes off the end of your morning commute! Well tell me Berenice, _was it worth it_?” 

She doesn’t say – ‘ _how dare you almost die and leave me all alone again – how dare you remind me how much I care about you – how dare you be so bright and brilliant and easily extinguished_ ’ – but she thinks it, and worries that she shows it in the brightness of her eyes, or the tremor of her voice.

Bernie peers at her in consternation, and reaches out an unsure hand to Serena. It is a gesture so evidently guileless, that, against her better judgement, she takes it; allows herself to be drawn closer to the bed, biting her lip desperately in an effort to stem the sobs she can feel gathering in her throat.

“Serena, please look at me.”

Serena blinks and shrugs, and continues to pretend to be fascinated by a damp spot in the corner of the ceiling. 

Bernie sighs. “I was rushing because I didn’t want to be late. You’ve looked so tired recently, I thought maybe I could make it in early and give you ten free minutes at the end of your shift to relax.”

Bernie must mistake Serena’s choked sob for a noise of derision, because she quickly says “I know – I know, it’s not much, and it’s not worth crashing the car over – but I just thought even a small amount of time would help.”

Serena finally looks at her then; takes in those big, earnest eyes, and the tentative quirk of her lip, and feels herself crack.

“There was so much blood,” she whispers eventually. “I had to operate on you, and I saw - they had to wipe down the stretcher when they took you off it because – because there was so much blood it was practically running in rivulets.”

“They let you operate on me?” 

Serena bristles. “What are you implying?” 

“Well, I mean, I have no doubt that you’re capable of anything, but I’m your wife! There’s definitely something in NHS policy about that.”

It’s said so casually – so confidently, stated as a friendly fact she’s heard a thousand times – that Serena almost doesn’t register it. _I’m your wife_. Not ‘we were almost-lovers and then I left you and ran off to Ukraine.’ Not ‘we were friends, and now we’re both less and more than that, and it would be a weird and murky area to navigate in terms of hospital politics.’ _I’m your wife_.

Serena hears nothing but white noise as she slams the call button, ignores Bernie’s confused and increasingly frantic inquiries as the ward nurse appears at the door.

“Page Guy Self. _NOW_.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look guys, I said from the start that I was no medical professional, and I freely admit that this explanation for Bernie's convenient head injury is a) probably implausible - if not impossible - and b) cobbled together from three separate WebMD pages and a Wikipedia article. My apologies to anyone with a medical degree who may be reading this. But I ask you: is it really any more dubious a plot line than "this man is allergic to wifi and needs to live in a barn for the rest of his life"? Just... maybe keep that episode in mind as you read this chapter.

This time, when Serena is told to wait outside, she obeys. 

She watches Guy work through the crack in the blinds, and tries to ignore the way Bernie keeps glancing desperately towards the door. She can see her lips shaping the word ‘ _Serena_ ’ over and over again, and feels sick with dread. Surely this is some sort of prank. Bernie’s just having her on, has misjudged the state of their relationship and thinks they’re in a place where the joke won’t wound. There can’t be anything really… _wrong_ … with Bernie. She’s too… well, she’s Bernie. She’ll be fine. She’ll be fine.

She’s not sure that she believes it, and she feels her upper lip begin to sweat as she watches Bernie shake off Guy's hands in frustration. He seems to say something that calms her down eventually, and he beats a hasty exit, files of notes in tow.

Serena has him by the arm before he’s even shut the door behind himself. “ _Well_?”

The look on Guy’s face seems to be one part worry, two parts smug satisfaction. It’s a look that says ‘I smell a ground-breaking, name-making case study opportunity,’ but not one that says ‘Ms Wolfe’s death is imminent,’ and Serena relaxes, infinitesimally.

“It’s really quite extraordinary, but her belief that you two are… married, seems quite genuine.”

Serena feels her legs buckle slightly. Seems to hear herself say “ _what_?” from the other end of a tunnel, but can’t quite be sure. The whistling in her ears is too loud.

Guy, in his usual way, carries on regardless. “As we discussed following her initial operation, Ms Wolfe did sustain some - likely temporary - damage to the temporal lobe, which would account for much of her confusion – a simple case of post-traumatic amnesia.”

Serena manages to make her mouth move, but her tongue feels numb and heavy. “She thinks I’m her _wife_ , Guy! That doesn’t seem _simple_ to me -”

“Yes, well, I hadn’t quite finished, Ms Campbell,” he continues, in a tone so even and detached that Serena considers punching him in the teeth, the _pompous windbag_. “As I was saying – and you understand of course, that without _physical_ evidence, I can only postulate – that what should be a fairly simple case of a temporary amnesia sustained through the physical trauma of her head injury, appears to have been compounded by long term emotional trauma. It has developed into a sort of… psychogenic amnesia, and it’s here – again, I emphasise, that this is pure speculation on my part – that we see the creation of these false memories. Her brain has taken an opportunity to protect itself from further harm; to create a reality it prefers. Somewhere she feels safe.”

“ _Emotional trauma_? What on earth has Ms Wolfe been emotionally traumatised by? She’s been living it up in Ukraine for three months!”

Guy looks momentarily uncomfortable – which Serena didn’t think was even an emotion he had in his repertoire, frankly – and she eventually cottons on to what’s being implied.

“Oh, you mean –“

“The army? Yes. Far be it for me to _comment_ , but I was under the impression that Ms Wolfe has never sought appropriate… help… for the fallout of that particular can of worms. That you, in fact, were her only emotional support system, as unhealthy as that may be, and when that system was removed by your… most recent tiff… well. She is perhaps more adept than most at supressing – “

“- Bernie has no problems with the army.” Serena interrupts. “She misses it, in fact. She’s fine. She’s _fine_!” 

She attempts to force her way past Guy, frustration and fear bubbling in her chest like a pot about to boil over. She’s desperate to clear up any and all confusion and go right back to ignoring Bernie’s entire existence - after telling her where to stick it, of course - but he keeps his hand on the door handle and blocks her way.

“Let me by!”

“What are you doing, Ms Campbell?”

“I’m going in there to tell her we’re _not married_!”

“You can’t do that. Look, you know you can’t do that, you’re a doctor! It doesn’t work that way. You can’t just tell her the truth and expect her brain to right itself; it’s an incredibly complex organ. I know you’re only a vascular specialist –“ 

“Oh piss off, Guy,” Serena snaps. She feels as though she’s drowning, and Guy Self is the one on the shore, holding her head under the water and laughing, laughing, laughing - 

“Ms Wolfe seems to be suffering from retrograde amnesia. Her episodic memory is impaired. That is all anyone else needs to know. But I really – _really_ – don’t recommend you just… telling her that.” 

It is perhaps the kindest – and certainly, the most understanding – that Guy Self has ever been towards her, and she frowns at him. Spreads her hands in a rare gesture of weakness as she sags in defeat.

“Well then… what do I do?” She wishes her voice didn’t sound so small – that she didn’t sound as young and scared as she feels.

Guy frowns apologetically, and it chills Serena a little, purely because he is so rarely sorry for anything. 

“She’s in no immediate physical danger, but… taking into consideration the nature of Ms Wolfe’s condition, I think it would be better if perhaps, just for a while, you did nothing to… dispel her misconceptions.”

She hates to ask, but Guy is looking at her as though he’s waiting for acquiescence. 

“You want me to go along with this ridiculous charade?”

He nods, and Serena laughs - long and loud and sustained, and just a little bit too high and thin to be born of amusement. She can feel hysteria lapping at the edges of her consciousness, but she’ll be damned if she humiliates herself further in front of Guy Self, so she nips the soft skin of her wrist so hard it burns, and tries to pull herself together. Momentarily considers ditching Holby, as Bernie had when Serena needed her, and making a dash for the Andes, or somewhere equally remote. Dismisses it immediately, because she knows, deep down, that she could never abandon Bernie.

She realises then, with an unpleasant swoop of the stomach, that she’s stuck. 

Guy clears his throat uncomfortably. “I don’t want to rush you Ms Campbell, but your… colleague in there only calmed down when I said I’d fetch you for her. Perhaps you might like to go in. Speak to her. Learn about your marriage.”

Serena glares at him, and it’s a look that would fell a lesser man. “Please go and find Nurse Fletcher for me, and send him up when you have a minute.”

Guy recognises a dismissal when he sees one.

“Of course.”


	4. Chapter 4

As soon as Serena opens the door, she can see that Bernie is trying very hard not to cry, though true to form, she’s hiding it well by subtly burrowing her face into the bedding. 

There’s a curious, wrenching sensation in Serena’s chest, as though it’s being split in two and pulled apart on a string, and she can’t quite tell if it’s pity or guilt. Lord knows, she’s still angry – will perhaps always be _just a little bit_ angry; but Bernie just looks so small and unlike herself, lying among thin starched sheets - all white and purple and _red_ \- that Serena finds herself propelled by impulse across the linoleum to her side.

Except, once she’s there, she has absolutely no idea what to say. She stares down at the top of Bernie’s head, feels the silence warp and stretch and become grotesque, and thinks about how easily they used to communicate - before. Realises that she misses it.

“Hi, Bernie.” she tries.

Bernie sniffs rather unattractively. Doesn’t lift her head from the pillow. “Hey.”

 _So far, so unresponsive_.

Serena - usually so easily tactile, so effortlessly comforting - begins to overthink her next move. She wants to reach out in some way, but no longer quite knows how. She doesn’t feel like she can just take Bernie’s hand – it seems too startlingly intimate an act, now she is overly-conscious of what they do, and do not, and potentially _might_ mean to each other. A quick squeeze of the shoulder is too impersonal now, when she’s supposed to be posing as Bernie’s beloved wife. Against her better judgement, yet somehow unable to stop herself, she reaches out and tentatively pats Bernie on the head like a puppy.

 _Idiot_.

Curiously though, it seems to work, and Bernie’s lips slide into a smile, which turns into a wince when it pulls at least three different facial lacerations.

Serena thinks her heart might fall out of her chest cavity, weighted as it is with love and pity. Would offer it up gladly, in fact, for Bernie to be well again. Of its own volition, her hand settles in golden hair, stroking softly, and Serena is surprised by the strength of her own feeling.

“Oh Bernie,” she sighs, and she feels like the tone of effortless affection is not quite her own. “You have been in the wars.”

Bernie looks up at Serena coyly. “You could always kiss it better.”

Serena blinks.

“Ah, no. No. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean – Fletch will be here soon. That is to say, we don’t want to scar him for life, do we?” she laughs nervously, as though this is the kind of casual, flirtatious patter they’ve exchanged for the best part of a year as a married couple.

(‘ _Isn’t it, though?_ ’ something at the back of her mind asks. ‘ _Isn’t this how you’ve always behaved together_?’)

Bernie’s eyes dance with the remembrance of a memory she believes they’ve shared, and she laughs her genuine, honking laugh as she says, “I don’t think he’s quite recovered after he walked in on us at your birthday party.”

Serena smiles hesitantly, and nods. She had not had a birthday party this year. What she had had, was quiet drinks at Albie’s with the AAU staff - and Bernie had quite categorically _not_ been invited, though she had cast longing looks at her former friends from where she sat at the bar with Dom and Zosia. Had even, at one point, tried to send over a bottle of Shiraz as both a birthday gift and a peace offering, which Serena had sent right back with a derisive snort.

As Bernie gazes up at her with eager eyes, it occurs to Serena for only the first time that perhaps she has been… overly cruel.

She perches herself on the side of the bed, as she thinks she might do, were she someone’s wife. (She had been once, of course. But she’d never deigned to give Edward the time of day when he was sick, because ‘sick’ was usually a synonym for ‘hungover.’) She crosses and uncrosses her legs. Shuffles a little. Clears her throat, and tries to think of the kind of supportive things she might say, were they actually married. 

“So. Do you want to, ah, tell me what’s wrong?”

It’s a characteristic of Bernie’s to shrug and say ‘nothing,’ or ‘I can handle it,’ and lope off to brood in private like some sort of gloomy Byronic hero. Serena is surprised then, when instead of rolling over and changing the subject, Bernie smiles ruefully, and says “It’s - well - stupid and embarrassing, actually, but I was so worried that I’d forgotten something _important_. And you were behaving so strangely! I thought you were so angry you’d gone home without saying goodbye, and for the life of me, I could not work out why. It's silly, I know, because I remember basically everything right up to the accident, but – “

Serena cuts her off with a raised hand and a slightly sickly smile. “I understand. You’ve had a long day. You’re tired, and in pain, and you didn’t want to be alone.” She stares searchingly at Bernie, and wonders if she remembers Ukraine. Can’t resist a little niggle. “But you needn’t worry; I’d never leave you.” 

Bernie looks at her happily, the barb evidently whizzing free and clear over her head, and Serena sighs. It seems so unfair, that Bernie should get to trample the proverbial flower beds, and then, not only forget that she ever did it, but create an entire mental _botanical garden_ for herself to enjoy. 

“Bernie, I –“

“Knock knock,” comes the unmistakable and characteristically ill-timed interruption from the doorway.

“Hi, Fletch!” calls Bernie brightly. “Come on in!”

He shuffles round the door cautiously, as though something in the room smells particularly awful, and squints suspiciously - and not all together kindly - at her cheerful expression. “Major Wolfe.”

Serena cringes as Bernie’s face seems to crumple a little in confusion, and she wonders what Bernie _thinks_ her relationship with Fletch is like. She wants to chide him for being so rude to a woman who is technically a patient, but he’s only doing what Serena has tacitly allowed her team to do – support and mimic her own behaviour. _Right. Definitely too cruel then,_ she thinks.

“Nurse Fletcher, may I speak with you outside for a moment,” she cuts in, before Fletch – God bless his loyal little soul – can say anything irredeemably insulting to one of his bosses.

He nods in bemusement, and follows her out.

She takes a deep breath, and forces herself to maintain eye contact. “Look Fletch, I’d appreciate it if you could just… forget the way we – I – that is, the ward, encouraged by me – if you could just, ah, be nice to Bernie? How you were before? It’s just – well, she’s not very well, and she – well, she’s sort of - she won’t be back in work for a while, obviously, but I – she’ll be staying with me, and I need you to go to her flat, and get some of her things, and put them in my house. Personal things – photos of the kids, ornaments, any books that look well-read. Take my key – it should be in the desk drawer in my office – and her spare is under the second biggest plant pot outside her door – and just – just don’t mention it to her, okay?”

His face is a picture of confusion, and were the situation not so serious, she might laugh.

“Close your mouth, Fletch, you’re catching flies.”

His jaw shuts with a snap. And then opens again, like he’s going to say something. And then closes again. He peers down the corridor over Serena’s head like he thinks he’s on Stitch Up. 

“I don’t understand. You want us to treat Ms Wolfe like she’s done nothing wrong – like she didn’t go racing off to Kiev at the first sign of a shiny new trauma unit and leave the rest of us here to clean up her mess – professional and _personal_ , might I add – and, far from the cold shoulder you’ve been giving her for the past three months, you’re instead going to, what… _move in with her_?”

Serena sighs, and wishes herself anywhere else in the world. _Where could I go_ , she thinks idly. _I could go to the Bahamas, that’s probably far enough. A French chateau. Casablanca. Australia. Moldova might be nice. What language do they speak in Moldova? Moldovan? They have a good wine industry, don’t they_?

She decides she might as well level with him, as quickly and succinctly as possible. A ‘rip off that plaster, stick in that needle, get it over and done with’ sort of deal. 

“Ms Wolfe is under the mistaken impression… and I promise you, if you react to this with anything less than the utmost professionalism, I’ll have you scrubbing bedpans for a year - that she and I are a – a _cohabiting couple_ bound by a legal and religious contract for time immemorial. And Guy Self feels that it would be… detrimental to her recovery process, to dissuade her of the notion. Do you understand me?”

Fletch stares at her in delight, ignores her warning glare entirely, and almost cackles in glee. “Let me get this straight. She thinks that you and her are _married_?”

Serena does resist the urge to stomp her foot, but only just. 

“It’s not _funny_ Fletch! This puts me in a very difficult position, and I’m hoping –“ here, she glares at him pointedly – “that I can _rely on your discretion_.”

He tries to school his face into a more neutral expression, but she can still see his lips twitching, and she frowns.

“Absolutely Ms Campbell, you can count on me.” He holds up his hands in a pacifying gesture, and his face lights up as his next thought occurs to him. “Oh man, just wait until Raf –“

“Mr di Lucca will not hear about this unless it is absolutely necessary,” she interrupts. “It’ll be embarrassing enough for Bernie when she recovers her real memories without the whole hospital knowing about it. Okay?”

Fletch nods meekly, and Serena feels herself soften.

“Good stuff. Have Lou cover for you. And… thank you.”

“What for?”

“Oh... for being you.”

He beams at her, offers a cheeky salute, and swaggers his way off down the corridor.


	5. Chapter 5

Bernie, predictably, discharges herself that evening – AMA, of course – and rolls out of bed with clenched teeth, waiving away Serena’s proffered helping hand, and insisting that she is _absolutely fine and dandy, can’t feel a thing, could go back to work right now actually, thanks ever so much for your help_. Serena tries to ignore the way she's holding herself as she moves slowly around the room – like a puppet with the strings pulled too tight – but her heart flares in concern, hot and heavy in her chest, when she sees her stumble. She wonders if the universe will ever allow her to stop caring about Berenice Wolfe. Her efforts to convince Bernie that she should stay in for observation – “you’re a doctor, you suffered a head injury, don’t be ridiculous” – are met with a faux-patronising pat on the cheek, a loveably cocky smirk - “I’m _married_ to a doctor, what better place to go than home?” - and assurances that she will rest better in her own bed; and to Bernie’s credit, the performance only becomes entirely unconvincing when she proceeds to throw up in the walk-in shower. 

Serena barely has time to rush down to the porter’s staffroom to explain the situation to Jason – who, far from the minor meltdown Serena almost expects, honest to God _smirks_ at the prospect of his favourite doctor being allowed in the house again – before Bernie is almost frantic to leave, shivering on top of the covers in nothing but a pair of plain scrubs as she begs Serena’s jacket. Serena hands it off with little fuss, and pointedly doesn’t think about the blood-soaked blouse currently sitting at the bottom of the hazardous waste bin on AAU. It only reminds her of the very human nature of Bernie Wolfe; and how is that something she could even dare to consider? A human Bernie is so much easier to love than the glorious, blinding, arms-length image of her; and so much more easily destroyed. To love her and then lose her… well. She’s done it once already, in a way; she has no desire to repeat the experience. 

She watches as Bernie tries to subtly drape herself across the bed, in a way which she evidently hopes suggests ‘casual relaxation as I wait for my discharge paperwork,’ instead of what it clearly actually is – a woman who doesn’t want to admit that she can’t quite hold herself upright without fainting – and desperately doesn’t want to care enough to call her on it. Instead, she bundles Bernie out the doors and into the passenger seat of her car, and prays that Fletch has somehow made her house look like two middle aged women have been living there in the first glows of marriage for a year.

It was really very irritating of Bernie to insist on going home right away. She hasn’t even hoovered. 

Serena begins to panic then, sharp and cold in the pit of her stomach, because she realises that she’s just _assumed_ that Bernie thinks they live together in Serena’s house – and why would they? They could just as easily have sold up and bought somewhere smaller and nearer work with their joint funds; or maybe Bernie thinks Serena and Jason have moved into her poxy little flat to save money on… heating bills? And why would they be married? It doesn’t seem like something either of them would ever want to do again. Oh god, she doesn’t even know if they’re _happily_ married – what if they’re already angling for a divorce? Would Bernie want a divorce? What would she divorce her for? For spending too long in the shower and steaming up the bathroom? Surely that’s so minor… Serena can feel her head beginning to throb, and she thinks that she should just cut her losses; grab Bernie by the shoulders and tell her that they’re not actually married – that they’re not even friends now, that they never will be again, that she doesn’t even _know_ her anymore. But when she looks over to her left to see Bernie listing slightly against the passenger door in a valiant attempt to stay upright, she realises that she knows her too well - every quirk and damnable foible of her; and she knows that, had they really been in a relationship, Bernie would have moved in with her without a second thought. 

It was a scenario, Serena was loathe to admit now, that she herself had idly imagined in the weeks following their first kiss: what would happen, if they’d only allow themselves the freedom to love each other. Bernie had no particular attachments to – well, to anything material, really, but especially not to her shoe-boxy, post-divorce, bachelorette pad. They would have spent all their evenings at Serena’s - in the conservatory, wrapped in blankets as they watched the leaves turn yellow and orange, just as they had watched the blossoms fall from the trees in the spring - until one day, Serena might quietly suggest that, since she spent so much time there, maybe Bernie should bring over some of her things. She would have pulled up at the front gate one Sunday afternoon, cardboard boxes precariously balanced on the passenger seat of her convertible, and just… never left. No fuss. Because Bernie knows how much Serena loves her house - loves the memories contained within those four walls – and she would have wanted to make Serena happy. And she would have been. She would have been unimaginably, incandescently happy. 

_All hypothetical, of course_ , Serena warns herself. _That was an imaginary scenario, and you invented it before you knew what she was really like – before you knew that she was capable of – capable of hurting you so badly_.

When Serena pulls up at the kerb outside her – _their_? - house, she risks a glance over at Bernie, just to double check that her suspicions are correct, and is surprised to see her smiling softly.

“It’s good to be home,” she says simply, and Serena nods.

//

“You go and sit yourself down in the lounge while I put the kettle on,” she says as she locks the door behind her, and Bernie smiles gratefully before hobbling off - probably in search of the overstuffed armchair Serena knows was always her favourite. 

It’s a strange sensation, she thinks, to see Bernie look so… comfortable in her home. The last time she’d been here had been in late summer, when the air was warm and golden, and the whole house smelt of sunlight. Despite having visited Serena so many times before, Bernie had still hovered awkwardly in the cool darkness of the porch, gangly and uncomfortable, until Serena led her into the hallway by the arm and commanded her to ‘ _make yourself comfortable, for heavens sakes_.’ She watches her now, from the doorway of the kitchen, as Bernie clicks the gas fire on and falls into her chair with a contented sigh – Serena was right, it is the overstuffed one - and marvels at the change. 

She moves so easily around a house that is not her own, that Serena wonders just how much thought Bernie has given to this domestic life. It all seems to come so naturally to her that it cannot have sprung from nothing. _Is this what she thought of in Kiev_? Serena wonders. _Alone, in her cold apartment, did she dream of this? Of a life with me? A life… together_? She stares blindly at the side of Bernie’s head, lit up a hundred shades of gold by the firelight, and feels her anger begin to cool a little. It had never occurred to her before this moment that in those three months, Bernie might have suffered as much as she had.

The sound of the kettle clicking off distracts her, and she jerks her gaze away; but her heart feels almost buoyant now, for reasons she doesn’t really want to examine.

Serena delivers Bernie’s tea with the first genuine smile she’s given her in six months, settles in on the sofa opposite – _just to make sure she doesn’t keel over in exhaustion_ , she tells herself, _certainly not to gaze at her_ – and watches Bernie drink in silence. She is overjoyed when she sees a little of the colour return to her cheeks, sees her straighten a little in her chair and focus her eyes on Serena. Bernie seems to understand her need to maintain the quiet balance of the moment, and doesn’t speak; just sits, and gazes back with soft eyes. Time seems to stretch the silence between them, but it’s a comfortable one; the silence of two people content to revel in each other’s company. 

Eventually, Serena notices Bernie’s mouth tightening into a well-hidden grimace, and realises that her painkillers must be wearing off. She’s on her feet and rummaging in her handbag immediately, but she’s loathe to break their cosy bubble, and so she says nothing - just holds out the bottle to Bernie, with a look that says ‘ _here: take them. I won’t think less of you_.’ 

‘ _paracetamol will be fine - don’t fuss over me – I can’t bear it_.’

 _How well we communicate_ , Serena thinks. _Still, after all this time_.

“I believe a condition of me bringing you home was that you would do whatever the doctor ordered, Bernie, which means I’m in charge. Just take the painkillers, please.”

Bernie stares at her so intently that Serena has to look away – _too close, too intimate, I feel as though she could read my mind_ \- but eventually she nods, and dry swallows two capsules with remarkably good grace.

“Thank you,” Bernie says after a while, head beginning to nod in exhaustion. “For looking after me like this. I really do love you, you know.”

For a long moment, there is silence. Serena can’t hear anything over the roaring in her ears, but she can feel the beating of her own heart at the back of her skull, and in the tips of her fingers, and the room begins to waver a little. ‘ _No_!’ she wants to say. ‘ _No I don’t know that! If you love me, how could you leave me? How could you hurt me so easily_?’ But the thought passes out of her head like a breeze, and all she can see is _Bernie_ , and all she can think is ‘ _she loves me, Bernie loves me, we love each other, that’s all that matters, this is all that has ever mattered to me..._ ’ 

She turns her head to reply – to express her joy, to carefully press their lips together – but she catches sight of a hideous cat ornament that’s definitely not her own perched unobtrusively on the corner of the hearth. It’s like a shock of water down her spine, and Serena stumbles back a little. Because this – isn’t real. None of this is real. Bernie believes that Serena is her wife, and she believes they live here together in some strange limbo of domestic bliss, and she… she only thinks that she loves Serena because she thinks that this is her life, and Serena… she can’t take advantage of that. She could never be that selfish – _oh God what am I doing, I can’t do this, this is insane, I think I’m going to faint, I should have eaten something_ – 

“Yes Bernie,” she hears herself say mechanically, and the words taste like ash. “I do.” 

She doesn’t; and she can’t bring herself to reciprocate the sentiment. Not under these circumstances.


	6. Chapter 6

Bernie doesn’t last another 15 minutes before she dozes off in her chair, feet propped up on the edge of the hearth to warm her cold toes. She looks a little better now than she had at the hospital – less spectral and gaunt, a little more colour dusting the curve of her cheeks – but it’s perfectly possible that it’s no more than the result of a change in lighting, from harsh fluorescent strips to flickering fire; and so Serena tells herself that she should keep an eye on her for a moment longer - just in case. She finds herself staring perhaps a little too intensely for it to be categorised as friendly interest; but there seems to be something different about this version of Bernie that she might tentatively call a sort of... quietness. She's hard pressed to name the expression on Bernie's face, because it’s not one she recognises as belonging there, but it occurs to her eventually, as Bernie snuffles and shifts a little in sleep, that she looks… peaceful. 

She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Bernie look peaceful before.

She’s sure it’s a sensation Bernie must have experienced at _some point_ in half a century of living – maybe as a very young child, when everything about a person is up in the air and easily moulded - but certainly not since Serena has known her. Bernie is, by nature, a worrier. Bernie is constantly thinking about her mistakes; about the people she has hurt and the things she could have done differently; about all the ways she has failed to be what she thinks she should have been. She exists in a constant cycle of self-flagellation and internalised agony; and the worst thing, Serena knows, is that she hadn’t even recognised its existence until she noticed its absence. Bernie is always so weighted down by the problems of the world that it has become her default state, and Serena _hadn’t even realised_.

Serena’s tempted to leave her to sleep – she looks so cosy and almost unbearably sweet, flopped over the chair like a loose-limbed ragdoll – but remembers the stiff way Bernie’s been holding herself since the accident. Loathe as she is to disturb her and send her up to a proper bed, it would be the lesser of two evils come morning.

She prods tentatively at Bernie’s shoulder.

“Bernie? Bernie wake up.”

Bernie grunts a little bit, but doesn’t move.

“ _Bernie, get up_.”

Bernie blinks herself awake, and then winces immediately.

“Come on, let’s get you to bed. Up you come.” 

They manage to manoeuvre Bernie out of the chair and up the stairs with minimal huffing and groaning, much to Serena’s relief. She tries to focus on something – _anything_ \- beyond the warm weight of Bernie at her side, or the way a rogue curl of her soft hair tickles between their cheeks: so she counts the steps as they climb, and imagines each one of them is covered in spiders, and thinks about Guy Self in his underpants, and sings one hit wonders she hasn’t heard for twenty years (and it’s really very difficult to remember the lyrics to ‘Come on Eileen’ when Bernie’s warm breath is ghosting across the shell of her ear, but she thinks she manages admirably, all things considered.)

The problems start when they reach the bedroom.

Serena has no idea where Fletch put Bernie’s pyjamas for a start, so she drops her unceremoniously onto the mattress and tries not to make it obvious that she’s looking in every single drawer and cupboard within a three room radius. She eventually finds what must be Bernie’s meagre collection of clothes in, for some reason, the purely decorative trunk on the landing – and she’ll be having words with Fletch about that later – and has to laugh in resignation. Because of course Bernie sleeps in what are possibly the shortest short-shorts known to man; she’s a Greek statue come to life, and this is just Serena’s luck this week, isn’t it? Woman of her dreams wakes up and thinks they live together in holy matrimony; woman of her dreams looks so at home in her house that Serena’s heart still hasn’t stopped clenching in delight; woman of her dreams sleeps in the smallest amount of material it is possible to wear without being arrested for public indecency when she has to open the door to the postman.

“I’ve seen bigger pairs of underpants,” Serena mutters in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, I _own_ bigger pairs of underpants.”

She drags her feet a little on the way back, puts on her own pyjamas and cleans her teeth, and dares to hope that Bernie will have fallen asleep again; because then Serena could justify just tucking her into bed in the hospital scrubs, no harm, no foul. She concludes that the next few weeks ( _months_? She refuses to let herself think years) will be nothing but an exercise in restraint; and that exercise can only be aided by not seeing – 

_Oh_. Exactly that, actually.

Clearly, in Serena’s prolonged absence (‘ _why would you put clothes in a trunk Fletch, when there are four perfectly good wardrobes to hang them in, Christ, look what you’ve made her do, this is all your fault_ ’) Bernie had taken it upon herself to undress for bed. ‘ _And why wouldn’t she_ ,’ Serena thinks numbly: ‘ _She believes she lives here, after all_.’ All she can see is leg. At least, that’s all she can focus on. Miles and miles of long slim leg, just resting there tantalisingly on top of the covers, all soft cream skin and gentle curves lit up by the moonlight. She wants to reach out and touch; to trace every slope and angle until she could paint them from memory – and she doesn’t even paint, but God, would she learn, just to paint Bernie – and she’s moving towards the bed before she’s even aware of it. There’s something strange bubbling inside her, and it feels like madness; and she can’t stop herself when her hand settles on the flesh of Bernie’s thigh. 

She can hear that madness crashing in her ears in crescendo as she watches her own fingers squeeze slightly, denting marble firmness. She marvels at how warm and satin smooth and _real_ Bernie feels. At how impossible she seems simultaneously, her very own ivory girl - and Serena a poor Pygmalion. She runs a finger down the curve of Bernie’s knee, and watches her shiver – and oh, is this not the softest spot of all, it feels like _silk_ – and back up, and leaves a trail of goose-bumps in her wake. She's fascinated. There is a gasp, and isn’t sure if it comes from her or Bernie, but it is enough to make her aware of her own actions, and she steps back, fingers trailing slightly in search of one last touch. 

“Let’s get you to bed,” she says, voice strained. She laces her fingers to stop them trembling.

Bernie takes a moment to collect herself, eyes dark and seemingly bottomless with yearning, before she speaks. “Could you help me with this top – my shoulder seems to have locked a little. I can’t quite get it off.”

Serena steps forward and reaches out slowly, already in that strange, floating headspace between rationalism and desire. Her movements are sluggish and unhurried, and she allows herself to graze her knuckles across the skin of Bernie’s abdomen as she removes her scrub top. It falls to the floor unheeded. They are close now, breath almost mingling; close enough for Serena to feel Bernie’s breathing quicken as she gazes up at Serena; close enough for Bernie’s head to drop back a little and expose the line of her neck in supplication as she follows the movement of Serena’s lips like a charmed snake.

There is a moment when time seems suspended, an inch of space between them, and Serena uses it to claw her way back to herself. Hands Bernie her pyjamas, and tries to climb down from an impossible precipice. Mutters something about going to sleep in the guest bedroom.

“Why?” Bernie asks – and it’s a fair question really, isn’t it, considering she has a perfectly good bed here.

“You’re injured. I don’t want to knock you in my sleep and hurt you.”

It’s only _partly_ untrue, Serena thinks as she focusses on breathing through her nose: _in for two… out for two… in for two… out for two_ ….

Bernie laughs softly as she pulls up her shorts – and Serena tries so desperately to pretend that this is nothing out of the ordinary, that she’s seen it all a hundred times before – and pats the bed next to her. 

“I’ll be fine, you’re only a tiny little thing. Come on; I sleep better when you’re here anyway.”

And how can Serena refuse that? 

“Okay, fine. But just – stay on your side. I don’t want to have to take you back to the hospital on my day off.”

“Of course,” says Bernie compliantly. “Hop in.”

‘ _Lucky we sleep on different sides of the bed_ ,’ Serena thinks to herself as she curls into a ball on the very furthest edge of the mattress.

“Thank you,” Bernie sing songs smugly from somewhere over her left shoulder, before closing the space between them.

Serena stiffens, and tries to hold herself straight – tries to maintain as few points of contact as possible between them – but she can still sense Bernie’s presence behind her, larger than life, even in rest. 

Can still feel the heat of Bernie’s body dance along her spine.

She does not sleep much that night.


	7. Chapter 7

A week passes in this odd domestic limbo, and Serena feels as though she might go mad. It’s a strange way to live, she knows; in this liminal space, where everything is at once real and unreal. She feels Bernie begin to itch under her skin, and longs to escape – to breathe freely, just for a moment – but everywhere she turns seems only to send her spiralling further off centre, away from any kind of solid, immutable reality.

The worst part is, she knows, that on some level, she herself is beginning to become immersed in the pretence. It’s like a curious kind of theatre; she stands on stage, and sees the scenery she knows to be false look so real. She almost believes in it – could look at it side on in the heat of the moment, and give it its own kind of truth – and yet she knows that it’s only painted; will fall so easily, and look so gaudy when the lights come up. And always, she is aware of Bernie waiting at home for Serena to return, somehow both herself and not herself simultaneously.

There is something to be said for returning to a house awash with soft golden lamp light and the warmth of Bernie’s presence, she thinks. Since that first evening, when Bernie had so easily settled herself in the living room as though it was somewhere she belonged, every nook and cranny has been filled with her, and the house feels almost alive with love. It’s so easy to forget that none of it is _real_ – and sometimes, in the dark of night, as she slips between dreams and waking, Serena questions why she should think of it as _unreal_ ; because surely a created reality is still its own kind of reality? Has this life not become real by their living of it?

When Serena thinks of Bernie now, she is somehow a thousand different things at once, and she doesn’t know exactly how she feels about any of them, except they all make her heart clench painfully. She wants to devote herself to deciphering them though; wants to devote herself to deciphering _Bernie_.

She can’t stop looking at her, now she has permission. 

Berenice Wolfe is, and has always been, a work of art; unusual features and colouring balanced carefully on a fulcrum of attractiveness – one inch to the left or right, one slightly different addition or subtraction, and her face would become some kind of curious caricature. It fascinates Serena, that Bernie has stumbled upon beauty so accidentally; no one else in the world could have a face like hers - and if they did, they couldn’t carry it like she does. 

So she stares a little too hard, and touches a little too long, just because she can – and because she can’t help herself. 

Of course, the unique magic of this life lies in the way it balances itself on a knife’s edge; and that balance is frequently disturbed by Bernie’s genuine belief that she and Serena are deeply and irrevocably in love.

//

“Penny for them?” Bernie prods her as they eat dinner on the seventh evening of her recovery.

Serena swallows a forkful of salmon and manages to drag her eyes away from the fading bruise on Bernie’s sharp little collar bone; and perhaps it’s the warmth of the wine, or the swell of relief and fondness she feels, that Bernie is sitting here and not lying dead in a ditch somewhere, but she feels loose and soft, and willing to tell the truth.

“I just… love you. So much. And I’m so glad you’re here; and I’m so glad you’re _you_. I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life. I don’t know what I _did_ – before you came.” Serena doesn’t know which life the words belong to – to the real world, or to the world Bernie has created for them – but it doesn’t matter. They’re true either way. 

Bernie smiles, clear and bright. Her shoulders are relaxed and free from tension, in the way they could only be in this illusionary half-world of marital bliss, as she reaches for Serena across the salad bowl. 

“Where’s all this coming from?” She asks, with a laugh that’s nothing but fond. 

“I…” Serena says, and wonders how much of the truth she can confess. Decides to settle for all of it, wrapped in an ambiguous way. “I so easily could have lost you. And I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.”

It’s true, in so many ways, she knows. For the first time, she realises that the way she’s treated Bernie has been unconscionable. How would she really have felt, if she actually _had_ given up on Serena and AAU after three months of bullying, and left for somewhere – some _one_ \- else? Would Serena have felt vindicated? Would she have felt as though she’d proven something, as though she’d had some sort of revenge on Bernie? No, she realises. She would have felt guilty. She would have felt… bereft.

However angry she has been with Bernie in the past – and, undoubtedly, would be in the future – she could never be entirely indifferent to her. She’s seized with the sudden urge to rush to Bernie’s side and gather her to her chest, and beg for a fresh start. 

For the first time since the accident, she’s glad Bernie doesn’t remember any of the past six months; because she’s _ashamed_ of herself. 

“Oh Serena, don’t worry – please, don’t worry; I’m fine, honestly. It’s all better now, look; I could even move my shoulder a little this morning.” 

Bernie waves her arm a bit to demonstrate, wine sloshing over the sides of the glass in her enthusiasm; in her desperation to reassure Serena. 

Serena sniffs and blinks frantically. She doesn’t want to cry in front of Bernie; doesn’t want her sympathy.

“Oh – have some more wine,” she says instead, opening the second bottle and pulling Bernie out of the kitchen by the elbow.

//

By her fourth glass, Serena is feeling well and truly dreamy. Bernie’s voice crackles to her like music turned low on an old car stereo, and she feels herself swaying closer into her side as the evening progresses, until she’s curled into her warmth like a particularly satisfied cat. She’s never known a sense of comfort like it before; this feeling of cosy contentment, as though she could just melt through the fabric of reality entirely and become one with the soft green earth. 

Bernie feels like _home_.

When she turns Serena’s head towards her gently, and kisses her with the softness of familiarity, Serena allows it. Allows those tender lips to travel a path to her throat, and offers it up to Bernie like a gift. Her eyes flutter closed, and she begins to forget that anything has ever existed that isn’t here in this moment; but thinks, distantly, that this is somehow monumental – that she is getting something she has always wanted. She feels nothing and everything simultaneously, extremities numbed by desire, trails of fire wherever Bernie touches, and hardly dares to breathe. She feels far from earthy now; floats high above herself, up in the aether, tethered to her body by a string of sensation.

It is only when her own hands fumble their way between them, towards the button of Bernie’s jeans, and seem lost in their own course of action, that she realises that she can’t do this. That this is very much an act which belongs to the people they are not – to the version of Serena she is only pretending to be. 

“Bernie, stop.” 

She can’t open her eyes yet, or she’ll be lost once more; but she feels Bernie’s warm weight lift itself off her, and almost cries out at the loss. 

“What’s wrong?” The concern in Bernie’s voice burrows its way into her chest, and settles somewhere under her sternum, where it contracts and expands with each breath.

“I…” How could she possibly explain? How can she tell Bernie that she can’t take advantage of her like this; when she believes they’re married, that they’ve done it a thousand times before, in a thousand different ways and places. She could never forgive herself for it; could never use Bernie in that way. 

Could never taint their friendship with her own deception. 

“I don’t want – to hurt you,” she tries; the same excuse she’s used all week, to avoid this very situation.

Bernie laughs in relief. “Oh, but you needn’t worry! I’m fine – my arm’s healed, my back’s no stiffer than usual – I’m back to normal, really.”

She leans in again, and Serena almost flinches in her haste to move away.

“No – it’s – oh, you cannot understand!” She can feel the desperation rolling off herself in waves, and tries to ignore the fear in Bernie’s eyes. 

“You can’t understand,” she repeats, calmer now. “Please; don’t ask it of me.” 

She can’t look at Bernie; can’t bear to see her love and concern. 

“Serena – it’s okay. Whatever it is, I promise you. It’s okay.”

Serena nods, and backs out of the door as quickly as she’s able. 

“I’m going upstairs. I have too much to do tomorrow to sit up all night. I’m - I'm sorry.”

It isn’t until later, when they’re lying in bed with what seems like a cold ocean between them, that Bernie speaks. 

“I’m ready to go back to work. There’s too much there for you to do alone.”

Serena feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. Stares determinedly at the ceiling, and watches a cobweb swing in the draft. 

“I’ll have to check with someone before you’re allowed back on the ward. I can’t sign you off myself. I’ll call Ric in the morning.”

“Alright,” Bernie says in resignation, before rolling over and clicking off her lamp. 

She makes no move to breach the distance between them, and as the night wears on, Serena finds that she misses her.


	8. Chapter 8

She doesn’t end up phoning Ric, but Guy. Bernie is evidently physically fine – she can ascertain that for herself - but Serena refuses to have her back on the ward if her scrambled brains are going to endanger a patient. She almost hopes that Guy will tell her, in no uncertain terms, that Bernie is to stay home until she comes back to herself – that Serena should keep her in suspended animation just a little while longer – but she understands that much of the beauty of having Bernie all to herself in this wonderful play of pretence, is that it’s an ultimately unsustainable scenario. She can’t keep her locked up in the house forever; and if she stretched it out any longer, the magic of it would become stale. So when Guy says that she should be fine to come in, as long as she sticks to paperwork and ward rounds, Serena knows that it’s time for them to step outside their intoxicating domestic bubble; that she’ll have to shatter the illusion in order to preserve it. 

//

Bernie bounces out to the car on Monday morning with all the enthusiasm of a puppy who’s not been exercised. She looks more well rested than Serena has ever seen her - certainly, more well rested than she has been since Ukraine ( _and there’s that niggle of guilt again, at the thought that she has been in some part responsible for the exhausted line of Bernie’s thin shoulders_.) Serena can’t honestly say that she relates – she can hardly remember the last night of good sleep she had, without the constant, humming awareness of Bernie’s presence in the back of her mind - but she appreciates the small, eager smile playing about Bernie’s mouth just the same. Thinks, briefly, that perhaps Bernie’s happiness is more dear to her than anything else in the world – even getting her full 8 hours. 

They arrive at Holby early enough for coffee and a bun, and squirrel them away to their office to eat in peace. Bernie’s smile becomes a full-blown grin as she watches the everyday bustle of the ward through the open door.

“It’s good to be back,” she says softly, contentment in every syllable.

Serena nods, and knows that she is experiencing the final moments of their curious, self-contained little world. The office is somehow still a part of their soft and silent home life - calm and still and safe, and belonging to just the two of them. As a space, it seems almost tangible – the final, definite barrier between the life they’ve been living together, and the public world they must return to. Serena suddenly wants nothing more than to hurry Bernie back out of the doors without allowing her to interact with any part of it – the ward is so loud, and so cloying, and so unlike the comfort of just _being together_ – but she straightens her spine instead, and steps out into the breach.

Bernie follows behind her, and shuts the office door with a finality that makes Serena flinch. She feels strangely melancholy. It’s not as though anything’s really _different_ – they’re still _them_ , whatever situation they’re in - but there’s such a sense of loss involved in Bernie’s returning to work; in opening up this precious new life between them to the life they lived _before_. It's so much more flimsy when it’s mixed in with something so undeniably definite. 

Fletch heads towards them with a stack of patient files, and Serena knows that it’s too late to turn back now.

“Welcome back to the madhouse,” he says in his brightest voice, glancing to Serena for confirmation. 

She nods in a way which she hopes is imperceptible to Bernie – _yes Fletch – that’s right – she still thinks you’re friends – thank you for doing this so easily_.

Bernie accepts half the pile of files from him with a “thanks, Fletch,” and heads off onto the ward.

Fletch stares at Serena. “So she still thinks – “

“Yes.”

“And she doesn’t remember – “

“No.” 

He nods in Bernie’s direction. “You’d better let Raf and Morven know then. They’re ah – not best pleased with her.”

She balks and rushes off to intercept Raf, who’s stony faced and making a beeline for Bernie. She curses herself for not considering how imperfectly these two worlds line up; too caught up in her fantasies of the sublime to recognise the intricacies of interlocking and conflicting pieces of people. She reaches them just as Raf is subtly shaking off Bernie’s friendly hand, and shoehorns him into her office. Tells him to be nice to Bernie, but doesn’t explain why, and asks him to trust her.

He stares at her for a long second. If anyone had experienced the worst parts of Bernie’s actions in her absence, it was Raf. It was he who’d had to drag Serena from Albie’s at closing time, when she was on the brink of making a regrettable decision and going home with someone whose name she didn’t know, but whose eyes were dark and predatory; who’d come into her office at the end of long shifts to find her gazing at Bernie’s empty chair with vacant and tear filled eyes; who’d fielded call after frantic call from Jason about how oddly his auntie was behaving, how she was always late and slow and so unlike herself. 

So Raf has no desire to be anything but harsh towards Bernie. Feels that she deserves very little kindness from him, and even less from Serena, who he admires even more because she seems so infinitely capable of doling it out from endless reserves.

“Fine. But we don’t _owe_ her anything. Least of all you.”

She is silent for a moment; and when she speaks, her voice is soft and wistful. “I think we both know that’s not quite true, don’t we?”

They turn to watch Bernie through the half-closed blinds of the office as she accepts another stack of paperwork from Fletch with a shrug, blowing her fringe out of her eyes with a puff of air. Watch as she stops to speak to the old man in bed five with a kind and patient smile, though they both know that she’s still not entirely comfortable with her own bedside manner.

Bernie _tries_ , Serena realises. That is what is so wonderful about her. She is never cold, or indifferent, or as unfeeling as one might expect from someone who has lived the life she has. In spite of everything she has seen and experienced, Bernie still wants to do _better_. She is 51 years old, and she has not yet become hardened. She is still learning things, and becoming things, and believing in things with a kind of natural hopefulness tempered by ingrained realism that makes Serena’s stomach flip with fierce affection. There is something so… gentle about Bernie’s soul. 

Serena wonders about her own soul. Thinks about the person she used to be, before she boxed it all away to become AAU’s nurturing mother. A charming, calculating little cat, with a soothing purr and vicious claws, she realises. Callous and manipulative, and perhaps a little hard; too keen to weasel her way to the top by any means necessary, too quick to hold a grudge or form a harsh opinion. That is where she and Bernie differ, she thinks. Bernie would never be deliberately cruel or vindictive – but Serena is certainly capable of it. 

Something of what she’s feeling must show on her face, because Raf squeezes her arm, and says kindly, “will you ever stop loving her?”

Serena shakes her head ruefully. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I ever could.”

Raf nods as though he understands; but Serena thinks that he couldn’t possibly know anything. Thinks that no one could possibly know how she feels in this precise moment, on the brink of a kind of extraordinary enlightenment. She longs to explain it to him, but doesn’t want to confess to her own guilt – doesn’t have the words to do so in any case. 

“Ukraine wasn’t about cruelty,” she says at last. “It was fear. And that – that _is_ forgivable.”

There is a pause. “I’ll tell Morven,” Raf says.

//

The rest of their shift goes by without incident, and Bernie seems almost to glow with pleasure at being back at work. Serena doesn’t know how to look at her. This is the problem, she thinks, with Guy Self’s stupid plan. How can she live their real life and Bernie's invented one simultaneously? How can she exist as both loving wife and embittered colleague? She is performing for Bernie and her staff and herself all at once, and can’t quite find the right line to balance along; feels that she could trip and fall at any moment. She decides to try and recreate the way things had been before they’d kissed – that easy, friendly closeness that blurs lines all of its own – but isn’t sure that she remembers how to be that person. It all seems so long ago now.

When Bernie tries to take her hand as they exit AAU, she flinches away instinctively. They’ve never behaved like this in any incarnation of their relationship – never been free and easy with affection in view of the prying eyes of the hospital, however tactile they might have been in private. One look at Bernie’s hand hanging limp and frozen between them though, and Serena seizes it without thought, threading their fingers back together with courage she almost finds surprising. 

“Cold hands,” she mutters, by way of explanation. 

They pass Morven on their way out, just clocking in for the night shift. She takes one look at the lack of space between them, and squeals with the kind of delight only a young woman in her twenties can muster.

“I’m so _glad_ you’re friends again,” she says as she launches herself at Bernie. “It’s been so horrible with you two not speaking, I’ve missed–“

“Yes Morven, that’s quite enough of that!” Serena says, gently extricating a confused looking Bernie from Morven’s tight hug. 

_I’m going to kill Raf_ , she thinks.

“Not speaking?” Bernie questions in confusion. “When were we not speaking?"

There is silence.

"Serena?” 

Serena’s mind begins to descend into the white noise of panic as she stares at Bernie. She shrugs her shoulders – and they feel too heavy, as though she’s moving through treacle – and tries to laugh it off. 

“Oh – you know. It wasn’t a big deal,” she says, and tries to lead them out into the fresh air. She’s sure that if she could just get them moving again, this problem would seem small and insignificant, but Bernie won’t budge. She grabs Serena by the other arm, and turns her to face her. 

“We’re always speaking, even if it’s to argue. Aren’t we?” 

Serena turns to Morven. “You must have gotten the wrong end of the stick from somewhere Dr Digby.”

Morven looks stricken, and Serena waves it off with a gesture that says _you weren’t to know_.

“I’ll just – ah –“ Morven points in the direction of the ward and darts off with an apologetic glance at Serena.

Serena links her arm through Bernie’s and pulls her towards the sliding doors as though she’s an extremely belligerent riding school pony. After a moment of digging in her heels, she moves, and Serena hurries them out to the car.

“Why did Morven think we’d had some sort of falling out?” Bernie persists, almost jogging to keep up with the pace Serena has set. “Will you – will you just slow down for two minutes!” 

Serena stops. Can’t bring herself to look at Bernie. Worries that her eyes will tell the truth. Her mind is nothing but Guy Self’s words bouncing around like an echo chamber - _her brain has taken an opportunity to protect itself from further harm - somewhere she feels safe - the nature of Ms Wolfe’s condition - long term emotional trauma – you were her only emotional support system – removed by your most recent tiff – don’t tell her don’t tell her don’t tell her don’t tell her_ – 

“Oh, she probably just means that small disagreement we had over patient care, just before your accident,” Serena says a little too quickly. “I hardly remember the details now, it was so unimportant. You know how Morven is – she’s very sensitive to these things. Feels things too deeply. I’d forgotten all about it myself, hadn’t you?”

Bernie stares. “Well… yes. I don’t remember it at all, actually. When was this?” 

“The… Sunday? I think?” Serena sees a golden opportunity and runs with it. “When you woke up, and you were so sure you’d forgotten something; this must be what it was. Just a little bit of forgetfulness after the shock of an accident that big, it’s hardly surprising, is it?” 

Bernie shakes her head hesitantly. 

“There, aren’t you glad to have that mystery solved?”

Bernie squints at her. “I… well I suppose so, yes. That must have been it. It… would make sense.” She pauses for a moment. “So; who won?”

“The – the argument?” Serena decides to let her have this one. “Oh – you, Bernie, definitely you.”

“Right then; you can buy dinner in that case,” she gloats, and strides off towards the car with her coat tails flapping, far more purposeful now she knows there’s food to be had on Serena’s money. 

Serena trots off after her, almost faint with relief. 

“And don’t forget that Jason wanted a double portion of chips!” Bernie calls over her shoulder.

Serena catches up to her and bumps Bernie’s shoulder gently with her own. She grins, and Bernie bends down to brush her lips against her forehead with a fondness that makes Serena’s heart ache. 

She decides, in that exact moment, that she can’t give this up. That she can’t ever let Bernie discover the truth. It’s the worst, most selfish part of her, she knows; and she hates herself for thinking it. But this is everything she ever wanted, presented to her on a platter – this closeness, this warm little bubble of love. How could she let it go? She could never deprive herself of this. She could never deprive _Bernie_ of this; this new, lighter life, where she’s so content, and so confident within herself, and so – so unaware of how _cruel_ Serena can be.

That’s the crux of it, really. She doesn’t want Bernie to know that she’s so capable of wounding her. Can’t face the inevitable hurt in Bernie’s eyes. It makes her feel small and petty and imperfect, and she wishes that she could just _tell_ her, and deal with the consequences of their actions together. She ignores the voice that tells her that she’s making the wrong decision, and focusses on the things that make the continuance of this charade so necessary: poor sweet Morven wouldn’t have to pick a side, and then agonise over abandoning one of her beloved mentors; Bernie would be furious and humiliated if she ever found out that she’d been duped like this, even if it was under medical advice; this way, she doesn’t have to live in her horrid, damp little flat anymore, and stare at the wall for hours on end – instead, she gets to curl up in front of Serena’s fire on cold winter evenings and play scrabble with Jason, and be _happy_.

If asked, Serena would resolutely deny that this is categorically the worst idea she’s ever had.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in this chapter, I've had a lot of deadlines recently. (Well. I actually just have really poor time management skills, but like, who's keeping score?) Double apologies for the probable dip in quality of this chapter - I have no time to proofread!  
> Thanks for sticking with it!

After the first couple of hiccups following Bernie’s return to work, life begins to settle smoothly back into a routine. They drive in together if they’re on the same shift, often with Jason folded into the back seat, who chatters amiably to Bernie about whatever he’s especially interested in on that particular morning. They split patients between them in the office over a coffee before heading out onto the ward, and meet again for lunch at noon if they can squeeze it in. They go straight home at the end of the day, and order in whatever kind of food Jason has scheduled for that evening, which they eat tucked up around the scrubbed table in the kitchen. Serena deliberately makes sure to avoid Albie’s, because that way she also avoids answering awkward questions about their sudden and miraculous reconciliation. Somehow though, she doesn’t miss it; not when she has her own bottle of Shiraz at home to split with Bernie as they plough through their paperwork together, Fleetwood Mac spinning quietly on the turntable in the background. 

Soon enough, it feels as though this is a life they’ve lived forever. As worried as Serena had been about losing the tentative balance of their home life, she finds that she almost prefers it this way – with their relationship straddling the domestic and the professional. The hospital has always been ‘their place’ - the common ground where they first met, and first laughed, and first fell in love. Despite everything that followed – all the anger, and confusion, and unforgivable actions on both sides – it still feels as though the halls hold the echoes of memories of that heady happiness they once shared. They move through them together as seamlessly as they always did. Serena feels as though she’s back in sync for the first time in six months - with both herself and with her best friend - and she can’t remember ever being happier than she is now. 

Serena eventually starts to prod Bernie for stories of her memories of them - but only when they're tucked up in bed and the lights are out. They feel like half-real fairy tales if she can't see Bernie when she's speaking, stories of love from a distant land. It’s intrusive of her perhaps, to attempt to access this very personal aspect of Bernie's thoughts and fantasies – a breach of trust far deeper than any physical advantages Serena has avoided taking - but she can’t help herself. This is an opportunity she could never have hoped for before Bernie lost her memory – and one she certainly can’t hope for when she regains it. Maybe, deep down, she knows she's taking too much of a liberty – but she tells herself that it doesn’t matter, because she’s doing it for _love._

She learns that Bernie thinks they took a weekend in Dublin for their honeymoon – not too long, because neither of them wanted to be away from Jason or the hospital – and that it rained the whole time; but they didn't care, because they were together, slipping through rain slicked streets arm in arm. She thinks they go to the park on Saturdays when the weather is nice, and sit under the oak trees for hours, until their trousers are damp from the dew on the grass. The more Serena hears, the more she wishes she didn't know, because Bernie’s fantasy self breaks her heart. In her own mind, Bernie is everything Serena knows she wants to be – everything she _could_ be. She believes that she is brave, and confident, and comfortable in herself. She believes that she chose to divorce Marcus as soon as she got back from Afghanistan. That she took the initiative and asked Serena out the second time she came to sit with her on her lonely little bench nursing a cup of coffee – _‘next time you need a caffeine shot and a chat, you should just… call me’- ‘alright – maybe I will – would you like to get drinks this evening?_ ’ Thinks they went to see a rerun of Desert Hearts at the independent cinema for their fifth date – though Bernie refuses to call it ‘dating,’ because they’re over 25 – because ‘ _it’s the gay thing to do, Serena_ ;’ and that they held hands the whole time, totally unafraid of the world and what it might think of them. Worst of all, she believes her children are speaking to her; that she had the courage to be honest with them, and that they forgave her. 

She wants to feel guilty about lying to Bernie – about how completely contrived this entire existence is – but she can’t. They’re both so content and comfortable, and doesn’t she _deserve_ to be happy? Don’t they _both_ deserve to be happy? How could she tell Bernie the truth – that she never had the courage to be the person she wanted to be? Besides, Serena tells herself, it’s not as though she’s doing anything _wrong_. She’s following Guy Self’s instructions. This is just as legitimate as any other form of medical treatment. That she’s enjoying herself so immensely is merely an added bonus. It niggles at her, this protracted dishonesty, but she’s just selfish enough not to let it weigh on her.

What she does feel guilty about though, is that she sometimes lies awake at night, and prays that Bernie never gets her memories back. That she sometimes worries that she loves this new Bernie more than the old one, because this Bernie allows Serena to love her. 

//

They make a strange family unit, Bernie, Serena, and Jason, but it works. Jason is ecstatic to have Bernie round again, and makes good on his promise to keep the true state of affairs under wraps. He sometimes shoots Serena a less than subtle wink across the breakfast table as he shoves an extra egg onto Bernie’s plate at breakfast to show his silent appreciation, but he's otherwise doing rather well. Bernie adores him in turn, and Serena often catches the two of them giggling in a corner together – no doubt plotting something thoroughly devious – before they turn in tandem to grin at her impishly, toothy and secretive. She prefers not to ask what they’re up to; sometimes they present her with a delicious dinner they’ve cooked up between them, sometimes it transpires that they’re going to tactically team up to destroy her in scrabble. The split is about 60/40, usually.

On this particular occasion, they’ve conspired to drag Serena to a temporary exhibition on Renaissance humanism, purely because they watched some enormously dry documentary on Erasmus last month. Serena can’t say she sees the appeal of crusty old academics – but she _can_ see the appeal of her nephew's smile, which is why she’s spending her Sunday morning, not in bed with the newspaper and a mug of coffee as she’d prefer, but staring blankly at a plaque about Thomas More’s execution. She’s not entirely sure what she’s reading, but Bernie and Jason are taking notes – actual notes, in spiral bound notebooks Bernie picked up from Sainsbury’s – and Serena doesn’t think she’s ever seen Jason look more enthused about anything in his life.

She loves them both more than she can express.

She’s so busy watching the sunlight dance along the highlights of Bernie’s hair that she doesn’t hear a throat clear behind her.

“Serena Campbell, as I live and breathe! We must stop running into each other like this.”

Serena feels her stomach plummet; feels that angry little tightening in her chest at the interruption of her perfect family outing. She turns around reluctantly. 

“Imelda. What a – well, I’d like to say _pleasant_ surprise, but you know how these things are.” 

Imelda smirks at her, and Serena wonders briefly if she draws her energy solely from fractious social interactions. She’s just opening her mouth to cut Imelda down before she can really hit her stride, when she catches the gleam of Bernie’s curls as she moves. _That_ Serena is not a person Bernie has met – not that Bernie remembers, in any case – and she’d be ashamed to introduce them now. This is a second chance – to be kinder. To be _better_ , in Bernie’s eyes. So she bites her tongue, and smiles and nods at her nemesis instead. 

She turns to walk away, suddenly terrified that these two incompatible parts of her life will collide and explode, when she feels a thin arm slip its way around the dip of her waist.

“Hello,” Bernie says cheerily, waving her free hand at Imelda. 

Imelda’s eyes light up. “Bernie _Wolfe_! Fancy seeing you here! Goodness, it’s been years. How are you?” 

Serena sees Bernie squint in confusion, until – “ _Imelda_? Imelda Cousins? I didn’t recognise you! Last time we met you were –“

“Larger. Yes, I know,” says Imelda with an eye roll that says this is a conversation she’s had all too frequently. “Believe me, our dear Serena here made a similar comment.”

“No, no, that’s not at all what I meant!” Bernie rushes to say; and Serena realises it’s probably true – because Bernie is gentle and kind, and probably didn't spend a long stint of time at her previous hospital teasing Imelda for her own vicious amusement. 

Imelda waves a hand, as if to say ‘it’s done,’ and says, “so, tell me; what have you been doing since I saw you last?”

Bernie beams, and looks as though she might burst with pride, and Serena feels herself beginning to sweat. 

“Oh Bernie we don’t need to –“

Bernie silences her with a gentle hand to her forearm, and Serena can’t begrudge her this; this opportunity to be so open, so proud of who she is. To boast, the way she has never been able to boast before, of her happiness.

“Well – Marcus and I – you remember Marcus of course - we divorced. I divorced him. Because this here,” she says, squeezing Serena so tightly that she feels her breakfast rearrange itself slightly, “is Serena – my wife.”

“Well – we’ve met before, actually –“ Imelda’s mouth falls open. “Wait, _wife_?” 

Bernie tries to ask where Serena could possibly have met Imelda Cousins at the same time as Imelda turns to Serena, mouth still agape, and says “You _married_ her? What happened to 'Berenice Bloody Wolfe?'”

Serena feels the exact moment at which Bernie senses something is amiss. Her arm tightens around Serena’s waist, and she stiffens, but does not withdraw. Serena leans into her desperately, almost frantic in her desire to recapture something she knows now is on the cusp of being lost.

She has never hated Imelda, or Erasmus, or the local museum, or _the entire goddamn universe_ more in her life. Bernie is staring at her in confusion, and Jason is trying to show her something in his notebook, and Imelda, clearly sensing that she’s put her foot in something big, is backing off and making what looks like a ‘call me later’ gesture to Bernie, and all she can think is that _Bernie can’t find out now, Guy said it would hurt her, it will break her heart, she’ll never look at me again, she’ll leave again, she’ll leave again, she’ll leave again_ \- 

So Serena does the only thing she can do: grabs a suddenly wooden Bernie and a loudly protesting Jason, and drags them towards the exit.


	10. Chapter 10

Serena runs.

Behind her, Bernie’s boot heels clatter against the cobblestones as she stumbles every few steps, body twisted at an awkward angle as Serena drags her in the direction of the car. Jason is huffing in frustration and refusing to follow any further at such an ‘unsustainable and uneconomical speed,’ and she knows that she’s squeezing Bernie too hard, holding her too tightly, but she can’t find it in herself to slow down. _Doesn’t know what will happen if she slows down_.

She is vaguely aware that she’s probably pulling Bernie’s delicate back into spasm, and her own mouth tastes metallic and cold, throat burning as she gasps half-lungfuls of crisp winter air; but all she can think about is escaping – getting away from everything and everyone she knows, and passing out of existence entirely. She suddenly understands how Bernie felt when she hightailed it to Ukraine, and her forearm burns Serena’s palm like a brand where she’s gripped her over the sleeve of her coat.

“Serena stop!” Bernie gasps eventually, pulling them up short and holding Serena in place with very little effort.

“Bernie, please, let’s just go. Let’s go far away, we’ll take Jason, we’ll just leave, we -” she trails off because she doesn’t _know_ – she doesn’t know what she’s saying, or thinking, or what she _wants_. She doesn’t know anything in this moment beyond the desire to absorb Bernie through her skin and mould her into all the gaps and hollow spaces in her chest until she’s warm and filled with love.

“What is wrong with you?”

“ _Nothing_! Nothing. Please just –"

“If you’re going to tell me to just let this go –"

Serena shakes her head. “No. No, I’m _asking_ you to please _trust me_ -”

“ _Serena_.”

She feels wild and unrestrained, mind moving too quickly and filled with quicksilver thoughts she can’t quite grasp. She stares around Bernie’s shoulder desperately, briefly convinced that Imelda has followed them, that she’s going to expose Serena as the liar and the coward she is. That Bernie will hate her for the decisions she’s made, and she’ll never speak to her again.

_Bernie might hate her anyway_ , she realises. _And how could she bear that? How could she bear it if she couldn’t even look at her?_

Cool palms clasp her cheeks, and she realises, with something like astonishment, that she’s crying. She feels her mind beginning to slow, re-centring itself around those two points of contact, and suddenly, she feels surrounded by Bernie; calming, kind, brilliant Bernie, who’s flawed and belligerent and scares too easily, but is wonderful and complex and oh so _human_. 

She stares into soft eyes, searching for - well, who knows what? It’s a familiar ritual of their friendship: a glance over a scrub mask, or across the desk of their office, or over a bottle of wine at Albie’s. An exchange of the unspeakable, the intangible, the inexpressible. Except… they’ve not looked at each other like that for months now, and Bernie’s eyes are too light and clear and free of shadows; too unlike the way they have always been. Too unlike the woman she really is, and too unlike the woman Serena loves.

It hits her that she doesn’t want _this_ Bernie anymore – this strange, perfect creature, with none of Bernie’s flaws and foibles, none of the darkness in her eyes. She wants _her_ Bernie back, so much that her heart aches with it. What’s the point of all this happiness, if it’s come to her so easily? Without work, or growth, or a litany of fumbled firsts – of real firsts, not imaginary, perfect scenarios that Bernie’s injured mind has dreamed up? What’s the point of any of it if they haven’t _earned_ it? 

She loves every part of Bernie – even the parts of her that are broken and cowardly and shrink from the warmth of Serena’s touch – and she wants Bernie to love the worst parts of her, too. She doesn’t want to hide anything from her; not that ruthless, manipulative streak she supresses, not the quiet, cruel delight she takes in punishing people who’ve wronged her. Not even the months she spent punishing Bernie herself for cowardice, the way she revelled in her misery. 

She feels Bernie’s hands tighten, and watches the world slow down. Sees her breath escape in short, cloudy puffs, and watches thick black eye lashes blink slowly, once… twice… how long has she been staring? 

She has to tell her, she realises. She knows it’s a decision she’ll regret; but she also knows it’s the right one, and she’s not going to be brave enough to make it if she thinks about it any longer.

“Bernie, you’re right," she says, abruptly, before she can change her mind. "There is something.”

Bernie’s face falls, as though she’d secretly been hoping for solid reassurances rather than confirmation of her fears, and Serena’s stomach turns over with such a potent combination of love and pity and guilt that she’s left breathless. 

“Is it… is it something I’ve done?” Bernie tries tentatively – ready to shoulder the blame even in this.

Serena feels herself sinking inside her body, shrivelling up into a hard black stone of shame, and doesn’t quite know how she manages to force a smile. 

“No. Of course not. You’ve done nothing wrong, I promise. Let me just go and get Jason, and we’ll go home.”

When she pulls away, Bernie keeps a tight hold of her hand for a moment.

“We’ll be okay, Serena,” she says with a nod and a confident smile. “Whatever it is, we’ll be okay.”

//

Bernie insists on making tea when they get in, pouring it into the matching polka dot mugs Fletch had brought from her apartment. Serena wonders if she thinks that there’s some sort of special memory attached to them, because she always hands Serena the blue mug with a smirk and takes the pink one for herself, as though she expects some sort of comment or protest. Serena always has to disappoint her. It's too risky to guess at what it might be, too dangerous to say the wrong thing and watch this precariously stacked house of cards collapse around her.

The settle themselves in the living room, and Bernie takes the chair she’d sat in when Serena first brought her home – a chair Serena now privately refers to as ‘ _Bernie’s_.’ She looks so comfortable, stockinged feet tucked up under her and blonde hair freshly brushed out and crackling with static, that Serena, for a moment, can’t bring herself to speak.

“So,” she starts at last, and means to come right out with it. But she can’t quite bring herself to say it directly, even now; so she says instead, “what do _you_ think is wrong?” as though _Bernie_ is the problem – as though Bernie’s the one who’s guilty of something and has been caught out. 

Bernie looks as though she wants to forget the whole conversation – as though she knows, deep down, that Serena is hiding something terrible. She stares at her tea, and blinks furiously, like she’s trying to chase back tears. Serena can’t bear to look at her.

“Well. I don’t know, exactly. Everything just seems… wrong, somehow? Maybe that sounds vague and trite, but everyone’s been behaving so strangely lately. It’s just… so many little things that I can’t ignore when they all come together. Like, Raf said something about a path to redemption the other day that I didn’t understand, and he told me ‘not to hurt you’ – which was ridiculous, because he _knows_ I wouldn’t - not ever, if I could help it. And Fletch has been off with me too. He wouldn’t take my last bag of milky buttons home for Mikey the other day, even though I always send him the last one from the multipack because I lost a bet with him last year. And Morven keeps telling me how much she’s missed me, even though I’ve not been anywhere, and – and Imelda – how do you know Imelda? What did she mean, about you marrying me – what did Raf mean, or Morven? And I keep having these... dreams… and I’m so cold, and so alone, and you’re not there, and you’re never going to be there, and I feel this horrible sense that I’ve done something unforgivable, and I don’t – I don’t know _why_!”

She looks dark and wild, as close to uncontrolled as Serena has ever seen her. She’s never seen Bernie look so _afraid_ , and her voice is almost a whisper – frightened and broken, like a lost child, when she finally asks, “what’s _wrong_ with me Serena?”

‘ _This is my fault_ ,’ Serena thinks. ‘ _She’s scared and confused and she’s starting to remember anyway, and this is all down to me and my selfishness_.’

“Bernie,” she begins, and she can’t help reaching out for her hand. _As though that loose contact could save them now_. “Bernie… the truth is, your accident… it was… you – well, you – Oh God, _we’re not married_! There, I said it! You made it all up and we’re not married, we’re not even speaking, and I’m sorry for it but it’s the _truth_!” 

She spits it out, and feels heady with the relief of it.

“What?” 

Bernie doesn’t sound angry, yet. She sounds confused, and a little hurt, as though she doesn’t understand why Serena is teasing her, when she’s asking so honestly for help. 

“It’s true! I – it’s really true, Bernie, you have to believe me.”

Bernie stares at her, and Serena feels her heart turn over and sink like a stone when she sees the moment that Bernie, against all odds, believes her. 

“I don't understand - did it not go through? I thought - why would you lie? Why would you lie, to _me_ , Serena? What is there to gain from it? I’m your best friend, aren’t I?” She pauses, and seems to shrink a little. “Aren’t I?”

Serena still can’t meet Bernie’s eye, chips away instead at a drying drip of tea on the rim of her mug. 

“No, you’re not. You’re not my best friend. You’re – you were no one to me really, not any more. We – you – I – you left. We were going to be – oh, I don’t know, _something_ – and then you left me, and you ran to Ukraine, and you never contacted me. We haven't been anything but strangers for over six months now. We’re not _married_ , Bernie. We were barely even speaking, and I – it was my fault, really, once you came back. I was cruel, and I encouraged everyone else to follow my lead, and they did, and you –“

Serena breaks off when Bernie’s face greys, and the mug of tea falls to the floor and shatters.

“Bernie?”

“Serena,” she manages through gritted teeth, “my – Christ my _head_ – oh God, I can’t –“

She lists to the side, knuckles white with pain as she pulls at her own hair, soft curls matting and separating under the sweat of her palms.

“Bernie? Bernie, what’s wrong?” 

“Serena – Serena I think I’m dying –“

“You’re not,” she says fiercely, and prays fervently that it’s the truth. “You’re not, I won’t let you.”

Bernie slumps into the chair in a grotesque mockery of her peaceful evening naps, and Serena just about manages to dial Guy Self’s number through the shaking of her hands.

//

“Just keep an eye on her,” Guy tells her down the phone. “I can’t get out of this surgery right now, but she should wake up in her own time.”

Serena stares down at Bernie unblinkingly, untangles her knotted hair without thought.

"She'll be okay, though?"

"In all likelihood, Ms Campbell," Guy says, and she hears the clattering of instruments in the background.

She should probably let him focus.

“Can you say whether she’ll remember? The truth?”

“Not for certain. Look… I have to go. Please, do keep me posted, Ms Campbell.”

He hangs up. She stares down at the blinking screen, and seriously considers tossing it against the wall, before returning her full attention to Bernie.

//

She doesn’t fall asleep, this time. She watches Bernie like she thinks she’ll disappear if she looks away, and she doesn’t move even to close the curtains as dusk falls. Eventually, the room is lit only by the street lamp outside, Bernie’s face thrown into stark reliefs of shadows and orange light. She looks otherworldly and unfamiliar, and Serena is almost afraid of her – convinces herself that there’s something of the fey in her cheeks, or her hair.

But Bernie comes round eventually, just as Serena is beginning to consider ignoring Guy’s advice and phoning for an ambulance; and when she moves and winces, she looks nothing but human. Small, and human, and fragile.

“Bernie?” Serena tries, almost hoping that she won’t remember the previous day. She hates herself for it, of course – for wishing away Bernie’s memories again; but reality is so often hard and cruel, and she doesn’t want that for Bernie. 

“Serena… what…? – Oh. Oh, _God_.” Bernie staggers to her feet suddenly, drags herself up using the wings of the armchair and props herself against it. Stands tall and aloof, and every inch the major. Collected, and untouchable, and Serena knows – 

“I _remember_.”

Serena reaches for her, tentatively – hoping somehow, still, that this will all be okay – but Bernie jerks away, jaw set.

“ _You lied to me_ … you _hate_ me, and you let me believe that we – Oh God, this is _humiliating_!”

Serena scrambles desperately. “ _No_! Well, maybe at first – but I _do_ love you Bernie, I just..." she trails off. 

What can she say? ‘ _I just took advantage of you when you were at your weakest ebb’ – ‘I just hated you for so long too that I wanted to make you miserable, but I still loved you, all that time’ – ‘ I just got sucked into this bizarre fantasy life but I only had the best intentions, even though I think I’ve just broken your heart, and lost you forever, I just wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I just wanted you Bernie, all I ever wanted was you you you you_ ’ – 

“This is such a mess – _I should never have listened to Guy Self_!”

Bernie sways, loses her grip on the chair momentarily, and Serena thinks for one horrifying second that she’s going to fall, until she re-steadies herself on the fireplace. When she speaks, her voice is low and dangerous.

“What does Guy Self have to do with anything?”

Serena swallows. “He just – he told me that you’d remember in your own time; that there was a reason you’d chosen to forget, and we should all just go along, that it would help you – truly, Bernie, I thought I was doing right by you, I did, I –"

“ _We_? My God, who else knows about this?” Bernie’s voice begins to quiver with mortification. “Did you all have a good laugh? Poor, stupid Ms Wolfe, who’s so sad and lonely she concocts some pathetic fantasy life with the one woman who hates her most in all the world?”

Serena wants to cry, but she doesn’t think she has the right anymore. The balance of wrongs has truly shifted in Bernie’s favour. 

“Bernie, it wasn’t –" she stops. She can’t explain this away, not right now, when Bernie is almost shaking with emotion. She can’t justify herself when Bernie is so determined to ignore reason; she _won’t_. She shrugs instead, like some bull-headed, peacocking teenager called out in class, and wishes she had the words to express what she feels.

Bernie stares at her, incredulously, as though she’s seeing her for the first time. “Christ, Serena. When did you become so cold?”

Serena doesn't know what to say - how to say that she's always been like this.

Bernie shakes her head in disgust and turns away. She makes her proud, painful way towards the front door with one hand on the wall, every step evidently a Herculean labour. Serena wishes she could run to her and lend her an arm to lean on – wishes she could give her _everything_ – but knows that Bernie will never accept it – that she feels weak and ashamed, and wants to claw back even a small modicum of dignity.

“I’m going back to my flat. I assume it’s still there?” 

Serena nods, helplessly, though Bernie can’t see her. Won't look at her. Probably can't stand the sight of her.

She doesn’t wait for an answer anyway. 

“Goodbye, Serena.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this was truly a nightmare to write (not because it was upsetting - I've been dying to make it as dramatic as possible for weeks - I just mean stylistically) which is why it's taken so long to get it out. I'm still not happy with it, but hey, that's life!  
> Also, sorry it's so... hammy and over the top, I guess, but I can't help myself. I just love trash. I think my bloodstream is probably 40% gothic romance novels and 20% that really very problematic action-adventure film genre that was so popular in the 80s. (The other 40% is obviously Jemma Redgrave breaking down a door in slow motion - I am but weak flesh.)  
> Double also, I probably accidentally plagiarised a lot of dialogue from Overboard, because Bernie sounds suspiciously like Goldie Hawn in my head when I read this back, but I promise it wasn't intentional.


	11. Chapter 11

They don’t see each other for two weeks. 

Serena initially tries to tell herself that it’s a matter of circumstance. Their shifts don’t overlap for the first three days, and she’s in theatre all day for the next two, and so she reasons that Bernie could be just a few rooms away, and thinking of her, too, just waiting for the opportunity to talk.

But then Bernie doesn’t come in for their shared shift, for the first time since Serena has known her. She sends in a locum to cover her, presumably from the comfort of her own home – or, as Serena can’t help but think with guilt, her uncomfortable, damp flat – and when Serena asks Raf if he’s seen her, her says that she hasn’t been in all week. That he thought Serena knew, since they’re _fake married_ now. Fletch says almost the same thing. In fact, Serena discovers that no one – not even Morven, who she knows Bernie has always had a particular soft spot for – has heard from her. 

“Should we be worried, Ms Campbell?” Morven asks, all worried eyes and warmhearted concern.

Serena smiles at her reassuringly, makes the effort to unfurrow her brow for a moment so it seems convincing. “Not at all Dr Digby. I’m quite sure there’s a reasonable explanation – you know how Ms Wolfe is.” 

Morven smiles and nods knowingly, seemingly satisfied by her answer as she heads off to rearrange the Nurses’ Station. ‘ _How Ms Wolfe is_ ,’ of course, is a phrase vague and broad enough to cover everything from Bernie’s aversion to NHS bureaucracy and social niceties, to her overwhelming desire to self-destruct at any given opportunity; and Serena hopes that Morven will take it as the former, even as Bernie’s protracted absence increasingly begins to suggest the latter. 

The longer Serena goes without hearing any news from any quarter of the hospital, the more anxious she grows, and by the following Monday, she’s almost vibrating with nervous energy. She hates _not knowing_ – likes to dive in and face a problem head on with her array of Harvard Business trained problem solving abilities. She can deal with almost anything, she knows: can charm and obfuscate and twist meaning and motive and opinion until everyone within a three mile radius is eating out of the palm of her hand. But, as she snatches short conversations between patients in a futile search for news of Bernie, she can’t help but remember her string of failed personal relationships; and she begins to think that maybe this whole mess is her fault. Not just the _disastrous_ fake marriage – _though wait until she gets Guy Self alone, she’ll tell him what he can do with his expert neurologist opinions_ – but their entire ill-fated friendship. She examines their every interaction, right back to the moment they first met; and she realises that she pushed too hard. That she always pushes too hard. Sometimes, she knows, Bernie needs a nudge. It would never even occur to her to form a friendship from a work relationship, or turn a quick coffee run for co-workers into a coffee date with friends – to _connect with the world,_ on anything more than the most superficial level – but she doesn’t need Serena to shove her face against the glass of reality until the colours are too bright and the voices are too loud, and everything descends into a milieu of panicked sensation. 

She tries calling Bernie at home; thinks that if she could just speak to her, just _explain_ , as she had failed to do when she had the opportunity, it would all be _okay_ ; but when she doesn’t pick up the twentieth frantic voicemail message, Serena decides to give her space instead. Thinks that it must be what Bernie wants – this distance between them. It’s what she always wants, when she’s hurt and scared. 

So she gives it another week before she cracks and goes to see Hanssen. She asks where the bloody hell Ms Wolfe is and what exactly she’s playing at – casts herself in the role of furious colleague instead of whatever she really is – and is coolly informed that “she has taken her stockpiled holiday days, if you could just communicate with your co-lead in future, Ms Campbell.” She leaves his office feeling small and humiliated, and as though she’s wasted everyone’s time. Wonders if perhaps she has. 

She’s grateful that no one seems to want to – or more likely, no longer dares to – pry into the reasons behind Bernie’s sudden absence. Serena remembers how it was when Bernie left the first time; and whether or not she’s forgiven it, and whether or not she blames herself for it, suddenly feel immaterial as her chest fills with biting rage at the memory. She remembers how lost and bereft she’d felt. How alone she’d been, without Bernie by her side. But then she realises how alone _Bernie_ is now. Lonelier than Serena ever was, certainly. She'd always had Jason and Raf, idiosyncratic as they are, to support her daily for months. Bernie has no one. She only ever really had Serena, after the divorce; and Serena is _responsible_ for this mess in the first place.

Even – perhaps especially - given present circumstances, she feels fiercely protective of Bernie. Wants to shield her from the opinions of the world. She knows, intellectually, that Bernie is a big girl – that she’s seen things Serena can’t even imagine, that she’s experienced the very worst of humanity; but Serena so badly wants her to experience the best of it too. Bernie deserves that, at least – deserves a life of light and softness and warmth. Deserves to rest, after all this time.

Serena thinks a lot about the resilience of Bernie’s spirit; how she has managed, against all odds to endure, still unbowed and unbroken after half a century of living the hardest of lives. Bernie always looks at her with so much trust, so much kindness; and Serena can’t help but recognise how incredible it is, that she is still _capable_ of that kind of emotion, after everything she’s suffered. How incredible that makes _her_. And Serena, unintentional as it may have been… had shattered it all apart. 

She’s exhausted all avenues of information, left Bernie enough voicemails to constitute a pretty solid harassment case, should Bernie choose to pursue it, and embarrassed herself professionally on a daily basis for almost a fortnight, when she decides to bite the bullet. 

She goes to Bernie’s flat, and hopes to salvage what little of that trust she can.

//

It’s raining when she arrives, and it makes Serena unaccountably furious. She does so hate to be a cliché. She especially hates to be kind of cliché that has probably been played out by Hugh Grant in the kind of tragically bad rom com she loves to hate when she catches them running on ITV2. Of course, in films, the bedraggled hero usually doesn’t have to stand on the outside step for half an hour, buzzing futilely at the bell because the heroine isn’t home. Serena wonders if she should have called ahead, but thinks Bernie would probably have ignored that like she ignored all her other calls. This way at least, she’s guaranteed to at least catch a glimpse of her; can just see if Bernie's okay, even if she only slams the door closed in Serena's face. She wrinkles her nose in distaste as she eyes the clouds, and settles herself on the mossy step to wait, tucking her mac primly under her thighs and already calculating its astronomical dry-cleaning bill. 

She’s well and truly miserable by the time Bernie’s car pulls up, and thinking of nothing but the cold stream of water weaving its way down her collar towards the waistband of her trousers. The rain’s so heavy it’s beginning sting her eyes, and she’s gazing through half-closed lids at the puddle directly in front of her when she sees the approach of an unmistakable pair of legs. She scrambles to her feet more quickly than she’s moved in years, and feels her knees throb in protest.

Bernie doesn’t offer her a hand up. She tries to edge past without speaking, five Tesco carrier bags slung over each arm, and flinches when Serena stops her with one gentle hand, frozen pink and stiff with the cold.

They pause for a moment, balanced in motion, and time seems to pause with them.

“What do you want?” Bernie asks eventually – and she sounds so tired, so ground down and exhausted, that Serena suddenly can’t bear to bother her. 

Time speeds up again.

“I just – wanted to make sure you were okay. No one’s heard from you, and you didn’t answer my calls, and – well, I can see you’re fine, and I’m bothering you, so I’ll –" she jerks vaguely over her shoulder, and shivers as she feels a particularly large drop of rain plop down the front of her blouse. 

Serena knows she must look beyond pathetic, soaked to the skin and trembling with the cold, because Bernie hesitates for a moment, irresolute, lips pressed together in contemplation. 

“Did you walk here?” she finally asks, begrudgingly.

Serena shrugs and wraps her arms tighter around herself. The cold feels as though it’s seeping into her bones now. 

“It wasn’t far.”

“Well. You can come in and warm up, if you like,” Bernie says, though her tone suggests that she wants nothing less. “I can hardly send you off to get hypothermia.”

Serena considers how much she trouble she’s already caused Bernie over the past few months, and for a moment, feels selfish enough to seize the offer regardless. But she blinks through the rain – some of it warm enough to be her own tears, she realises – and sees the dark circles under Bernie’s eyes, the exhausted slump of her shoulders. Doesn’t want to contribute any further to Bernie’s unhappy state by trying to ease her own conscience. 

She reaches out a frozen hand again, and Bernie, warm from the interior of her car, seizes it seemingly without thought, rubbing warmth into it effortlessly. 

“I don’t want to be any bother,” Serena hesitates. “I shouldn’t have come, really, I just…”

 _Miss you_ , she thinks, but doesn’t dare say.

Bernie’s lips twist, as though she knows what's on Serena's mind, but she doesn’t repeat her offer – doesn’t press Serena, as she might once have done, to come up and have a cup of her favourite coffee blend, or offer semi-jokingly to fix her a real hot chocolate with all the trimmings. She drops her hand instead, and it feels so warm compared to the rest of her body that Serena feels a little off balance for a moment. She collects herself, and draws back. Tries, once again, to do the right thing. 

“Will I see you at work?” she asks hopefully, unwilling to leave without at least a taste of what she came for.

Bernie looks her in the eye at last, steely and resolute, and Serena has to look away. Can’t stand for Bernie to look at her so coldly, in a way she never has before.

“I don’t think so, Ms Campbell. I’ve asked for a transfer.”

With that, she buzzes her way into the building and lets the door slam behind her. 

Serena’s too numb to feel the rain on her way home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soz lads, soz, this is short AND a bit of a filler, so doubly whammy of things that suck from an update, I know. I acknowledge, I'm the worst. I'm just super busy and I didn't know when I'd next be free to write, so I just churned something out. I hope you'll forgive me when I get round to the next chapter, I'll make it a long one!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I really did mean to have this finished by Wednesday at the latest, but then I got sucked into this totally unexpected, left-field obsessive pit of the 1995 Sense and Sensibility film, and for some still unknown reason I decided I had to watch it 6 times a day. (Why, I hear you ask? Because of who I am as a person, I guess.) Anyway, a thousand apologies, here it is.

It takes a while for the reality of the situation to set in. Serena doesn’t properly register that Bernie is leaving, _again_ , until she’s shivering under the shower an hour later in a futile attempt to chase away the cold; but when she does, the enormity of it brings her to her knees. She lies there in the tray with her face under the spray, and tries to wash herself away – wishes she could just dissolve down the drain, or float away with the steam – but she remains, as always, damnably solid. Her heart continues to ache. She thinks she dozes off, or zones out of herself completely, though she couldn’t say for how long. She feels as though she doesn’t know herself at all anymore.

A bang just outside the door alerts her to Jason’s presence, and she only manages to drag herself up and out of the bathroom because she knows that he’ll be waiting for her to produce dinner from _somewhere_. She feels briefly, bitingly, spitefully _angry_ for a moment – can’t she even have one moment to herself, to wallow, to float around her own house like a shadow, to be allowed to _feel_ , just for a little while, why is it always her, _why must people always rely on her_ – until she stamps downstairs, willing herself not to snap at him, to find the table already set, laden with containers from her favourite Chinese.

“What’s all this?” She asks cautiously, unwilling to deal with whatever Jason has planned for this evening if it requires more than minimal effort from her.

“It’s for you, Auntie Serena. I am aware that it should be shepherd’s pie according to my own schedule, but I made several observations that led me to conclude that Chinese was the right choice this evening. Would you care to hear them?”

She wants nothing less. 

“Please do, enlighten me.”

“I’ve noticed a severe dip in your mood for over a fortnight since Bernie’s departure. I’ve heard you crying in the night three separate times, and when I saw Mr di Lucca in Pulses yesterday, he seemed concerned about your welfare, in a way he hasn’t since Bernie was on secondment. You’ve also been in the shower for four hours this afternoon, and my experience of women in film and television – limited though it may be by my own personal taste for male dominated genres – indicates to me that a common cinematic trope is crying in the shower when upset, particularly over a romantic interest. Am I correct so far?”

Serena nods begrudgingly. “You are.”

“I am particularly fond of you, Auntie Serena, and I don’t enjoy it when you are upset. I’ve concluded that, for both my benefit and yours, we should have your favourite meal tonight instead of mine, so that you can cheer up. I even ordered wontons instead of spring rolls – Auntie Serena, are you crying again? This was supposed to make you happier.” He frowns. “Did I do something wrong?”

Serena sniffs. “No – no Jason, these are good tears; this is the most lovely – the most thoughtful – you are such a wonderful, wonderful boy – the most wonderful man – this is the nicest thing anyone has done for me in such a long time –"

Jason blinks at her in guileless surprise. “Well, you deserve it, Auntie Serena. You do lots of nice things for me. You’re a nice person.”

Serena looks as Jason across the table, and he is smiling so earnestly that she can almost believe him.

//

They’re halfway through their main course when Serena decides that maybe, Jason can offer some sort of clear-sighted, analytical view of her current situation; so she puts down her chopsticks, and says, very carefully, “Jason – you know that Bernie’s gone now.”

“Yes, Auntie Serena – because you tried to help her, and she didn’t want you to. I don’t think she deserved your help if she didn’t want it. You didn’t even want her to be here, I could tell when you told me she was coming, but you brought her home anyway because you always want to help people. Even when you’re mad at them, like you were at Bernie.”

“Well – yes, I suppose I did, at first – but – well what you have to understand is that Bernie doesn’t see it like that. I lied to her – and maybe it was for the right reasons, but a lie is still a lie, and the consequences of a good lie can be just as bad as a bad lie, can’t they? If they still hurt someone?”

“I suppose so, yes,” Jason agrees, after a moment's consideration. 

“And my lie hurt Bernie, because it took advantage of a very... vulnerable part of her. And now she feels so exposed that she has nothing left to hide herself behind – and we all need something to hide ourselves behind, sometimes. So she’s going away to somewhere else where she can start a clean slate and become a new person, and I’ll probably never see her again, and I’ll _deserve_ it because I used the lie together to create a life together for us all. But it wasn’t _real_ , however badly wanted it to be – and instead of trying to help her get better, I was just so selfish, and I encouraged it, and I never even _asked_ Guy Self if there was another way because I was too caught up in my own head, and – well." She pauses, feels herself beginning to verge on the ridiculous. "Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. She’s going, and I can’t stop her. I won’t stop her, because I’ve taken so much from her already and she deserves to do something for herself that she wants to do. And that’s that.” 

She finishes with a nod, and pops a cold wonton in her mouth. 

Jason just stares at her. 

“Frankly, Auntie Serena, I don’t know how to respond to that.”

Serena shrugs. “Nothing to say really, I suppose.”

“Why don’t you go and speak to Bernie about it, like you do with everything else? She always knows what to say.”

Serena sighs in frustration, and feels the very last thread of her patience begin to fray. “I can’t speak to Bernie about it, Jason, because she won’t speak to me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I mean you need to explain yourself to her. Did you even try to talk to her?”

“Well. No.”

Jason nods sagely, as though he’s produced a great solution to an unsolvable problem. 

“Go and tell her that you didn’t mean to upset her and you only did it because you thought it was best for her. As I say, I’ve seen the films, Auntie Serena, and this is absolutely a salvageable situation.” 

Serena considers it. She’s not naïve enough to believe it could be as simple as just explaining herself to Bernie and gaining unconditional forgiveness; but she does think that maybe, Bernie deserves an explanation. She deserves to leave knowing that Serena’s actions were born, not of hatred or contempt, but of love. That she _is_ loved, despite everything.

“Thank you for the food Jason, but I have to go.”

Jason grins.

//

Serena stands with her finger on the buzzer until Bernie has to relent and let her in, and truthfully, she doesn’t feel even a little sorry about it. She recognises that she’s being insensitive and intrusive and overly persistent, acknowledges it, and promptly disregards it. Serena Campbell on a mission is a woman to be stopped by no one, and least of all by her own sense of propriety.

She jogs up the steps to Bernie’s door, with the kind of adrenaline fuelled urgency that kicks in right before a difficult surgery. Serena has always been a little more fight than flight, after all – rises to every challenge with aplomb - and as much as she’d like to give Bernie the space to leave quietly and lick her wounds in peace, she also wants, more than anything, to make Bernie feel a little better before she goes – to loosen the knot of self-loathing Serena knows will have settled in her chest. 

(She determinedly doesn’t think about what will happen to this reserve of energy when Bernie leaves – what will happen when it inevitably dissipates, and all she has to focus on are the years of silence and loneliness yawning out in front of her.)

Bernie opens the door with a jerk, and Serena can see that the shadows under her eyes have returned again - that she looks tired in a way she hasn't since her accident. _That’s my fault_ , Serena thinks. 

_I can’t let her go_ , she realises in almost the same moment.

“Hi, Bernie.” 

Bernie stares at her, and makes no move to open the door any wider.

Serena feels her confidence wavering momentarily, acutely uncomfortable in the knowledge that she has no right to be here. But she steals herself, and smiles hesitantly. She thinks about what her mother would say: _so much easier to get your own way if you smile, Serena darling, look pretty and approachable, Serena darling, beautiful women get their own way, Serena darling, smile smile smile smile smile SMILE Serena darling_ – 

“Can I come in?” she says, and tries to make sure her eyes are crinkled enough to make the expression seem genuine. 

Bernie looks at her incredulously, and Serena feels her face begin to slip. 

“Please?” she tries.

Bernie steps aside, and lets her in without meeting her eye.

The silence stretches between them and Serena senses that her usual all guns blazing charm offensive isn’t going to work. She isn’t quite sure how else to approach a problem like this. She has always been able to flatter and smile her way out of or around anything with very little effort; but Bernie knows too much of her for that. Has always seen right through the performance – right through to the heart of her. 

“Bernie, I just – I need to explain.” 

Bernie curls in on herself in a way that makes Serena’s heart clench. 

“You don’t need to explain anything, Serena. I get it, okay? I went away, and it was wrong of me, and you wanted to teach me a lesson. It’s fine.”

“No – no, Bernie, you’re wrong!”

Bernie looks up at last, so quickly her fringe flies off her face. “ _Excuse me_?”

“No, I didn’t mean – what I meant to say is that – I really, I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t do it because I hate you – I did it because I wanted to _help_ you. I wanted you to be safe, and get well; you just looked so _unlike_ yourself, lying there in that bed all alone, and I – oh God, I’m making it all about me. Just -" She takes a deep breath, and starts again. "Please… believe that I didn’t want to humiliate you. That no one thinks badly of you for – well, for thinking that you and I – anyway. I just… want you to know, before you go – wherever you go – that what I did… it wasn’t with malicious intent. I don’t want you to think that you’re not… that I don’t… _adore_ you.”

Bernie looks for a moment as though she’s having some sort of revelatory experience – as though she has seen the light of heaven itself, and has been warmed from the inside out – before her face falls again. Serena momentarily thinks that she might have gotten through to her – that Bernie might somehow, against all odds, have forgiven her – until she sees her straighten and close up once more.

“You don’t understand, Serena,” she says with a shake of her head. “I didn’t even know _myself_. I was a completely different person, and I had lived an entirely different life. The one thing I knew – or _thought_ I knew – was you. I created this whole life with you – _around_ you – because you were the _one thing_ that seemed solid. You were the one thing I believed in… and it wasn’t true. _None_ of it was true. And yet somehow, it still… it’s still there. I _remember_ all of it – I feel all of it – but I never _lived_ it." She breaks off, and seems to take a moment to gather her thoughts. "Can you imagine how… how totally idiotic I feel? That you hated me enough to want to run me off your ward, and I still… cared about you… enough to think – to assume – that we –”

Serena can’t help but interrupt, suddenly desperate that Bernie not think so badly of herself. “No – Bernie – it was! It was real in all the ways that mattered, I promise you. The way I felt – the way I _feel_ – you didn’t imagine that.” 

Bernie shakes her head and turns away, and Serena feels her stomach drop ominously.

“Bernie…”

“When I came back… and you were so cold… I deserved it, Serena. I deserved that treatment, because I was in the wrong. But I thought… I just thought that maybe, if I stayed around long enough, I could redeem myself. Maybe you’d forgive me, and we’d be able to go back to how it was before. I wanted to make it better. I imagined it the whole time I was away. What it might be like for you to forgive me. But… you never did. You still haven’t.”

“Bernie, I have, I did, I –“

“No. You forgave the person I _thought_ I was. You never forgave _me_. You have to understand, I can’t – I was so _happy_ , Serena.”

“So was I,” Serena whispers, so softly that she’s not sure Bernie hears her.

“But it wasn’t real. And we’re back to where we were before.”

“We are. We’re exactly where we were before,” Serena says, and wonders if she should stop talking; if she’s going to go too far, being too selfish, again. “You’re leaving. And I still love you.”

Bernie inhales sharply, and Serena thinks her eyes look suspiciously damp as she turns away. 

“… I’m sorry,” she says as she sinks down into an armchair, body turned away from Serena. “Please. Please, just… just go.” 

“Bernie, if you still feel the way you did when you thought – if you think you might –"

“Serena,” Bernie says warningly, and Serena knows not to push.

“Just – please don’t leave believing I think badly of you. I couldn’t bear it. If you go, Bernie, please, just know, that I really do think you are the... best... the most brilliant... the greatest person I have ever known.” 

Bernie doesn’t turn, and Serena pauses only momentarily before letting herself out. The door snicks shut behind her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long! Is anyone still out there?
> 
> I'm sorry this has taken forever, I had Real Life Commitments, but I'll hopefully be back to a sort of weekly/fortnightly posting schedule through to August now.

Serena thinks she should be surprised when Bernie strides onto AAU two days later, already clad in her Trauma blues. Somehow though, she isn’t; because she _knows_ Bernie. This is as much of _A Classic Bernie Move_ as bolting to another country has become: marching into enemy territory with aplomb and a belligerently set jaw, ready to bulldoze her way through any insecurities – her own or other people’s – and get whatever she thinks is right, or fair, or justified. Because Bernie does not only have the most highly and intensely honed ‘flight’ response of anyone Serena has ever met; she has the most intense ‘fight’ response, too, coexisting in the same body – and often in the same moment. That is how Bernie Wolfe remains such an enigma; how she does the exact opposite of what is expected of her more often than she conforms to type; how she consistently defies expectation, darts around, and across, and through identities like a silver minnow in a stream. She is at once the bravest and the most cowardly person Serena has ever met; it’s just a tossup between which approach her mind decides is the most conducive to self-preservation at any given moment.

Today, clearly, Bernie has gone for ‘fight’ – the kind of combative approach that brought her so much censure in her early months at Holby, that made her look so aggressive, so cold and arrogant. But if it means she’s going to come back to work permanently, Serena thinks, Bernie is welcome to do almost whatever she likes – is welcome to fight for her self-respect, for her dignity, for the Trauma unit she worked so hard on. Serena won’t question it. Doesn’t want to find out she might be wrong, to have everything fall about her ears. That Bernie's presence on the ward is only temporary. Thinks that if she just stays quiet and professional, Bernie might be able to stomach being around her again. 

She holds up a warning hand to Raf and Fletch, who look as though they’re settling in for a session of speculating, and watches them trip over themselves in their eagerness to pretend they were just setting off for rounds instead. She has always hated people gossiping about her – but what’s new, is that she hates people gossiping about Bernie even more; would take it all on herself, if only she could spare her. She wants to squirrel Bernie away from everything - from all the malicious cruelty in the world - and absorb her entire being into her own body, if only to protect her better. Feels for her that same kind of fierce and unconditional devotion she has only ever felt for Elinor and Jason. 

Morven – _God bless Morven_ , Serena thinks, _what did I ever do without her_ – squeezes her shoulder softly on the way past, and whispers a few words of encouragement in her ear. This is all such a mess, Serena knows; her staff knowing little, unequal parts of truth and fiction, and extrapolating them into some sort of extravagant Shakespearean tragicomedy, playing out right here for their own amusement in the halls of Holby City hospital. Serena wonders whether she’s going to come out of it this time as a Leontes or a Hermione. 

She avoids Bernie’s eye for as long as possible – _too ashamed? Too shy? Too in love to look at her? She isn’t sure_ – and busies herself with paperwork at the nurses' station. Eventually Bernie physically plants herself in front of her, and clears her throat pointedly.

“Oh. Hello, Ms Wolfe,” Serena says, and hopes she sounds as though she sees nothing out of the ordinary in Bernie’s presence. 

“Ms Campbell,” Bernie gives her a tight smile. “Got anything for me this morning?”

Serena practically drops her files in her haste to offer some to Bernie – all the best cases, she makes sure of it, hopes it will go some way to making up for shafting her with the bottom of the barrel for months – and knows that her smile is too wide, and too bright, and too hopeful, in spite of herself. 

“Are you here for good?” Serena asks eventually, and hardly dares to breathe as she waits for a response.

Bernie nods. Flicks through the files. Resolutely does not look at her.

“Well. Welcome back, then.”

And that’s that.

Serena knows that Bernie never wants to say anything about anything unless it’s on her own terms, so she doesn’t make a fuss. Doesn’t dare to do anything more than stare disbelievingly at Bernie across the ward for the rest of the day. Knows that her eyes look too bright, and her cheeks too pink, but can’t stop herself from feeling as much love and relief as she does. 

Bernie, to her credit, doesn’t leave it long before she corners Serena in the office, and asks her to go for a drink. Serena thinks she feels her heart physically soar out of her chest.

“Not Albie’s though,” Bernie adds, and pops Serena’s new and delicately formed bubble. “This isn’t a social occasion.”

//

Bernie may have said that the evening would be more business than pleasure, but Serena can’t resist taking a little more time in the locker rooms before she leaves, just in case. Makes the effort to fluff up her hair, reapplies her lipstick, instead of just staggering out to the car and home like she normally does after her shift. Can’t help but think – _hope_ – that this could be the moment. That, as improbable as it would be, Bernie might be inviting her out to say ‘ _Serena, I love you, I have always loved you, let’s just put all of this behind us and start over,_ ’ and smile that small, shy smile that makes her cheeks apple and turn pink. 

It is therefore with inexpressible disappointment that Serena arrives at Bernie’s chosen location – somewhere they’ve never been before together, in any capacity, and maybe that should have clued her in – to find Bernie with nothing but a jug of water on the table and a sombre expression. She hasn’t even taken off her jacket.

Serena can add up the signs well enough – she’s not stupid, whatever certain new (and, it must be said, male,) acquaintances believe – and what the signs point to is that Bernie is treating this as an in and out kind of job. 

“Do you want to split a bottle?” Serena asks, and knows she must sound desperate. Can’t stop herself anyway.

“No, no, sit down, please. This won’t take long.” 

Serena notices that Bernie is wringing her hands under the table, and wonders whether that damnable flight instinct is beginning to triumph over fight once more. _It usually does in personal matters_ , she thinks, with a flicker of the embers of resentment.

Serena sits, and pointedly takes off her jacket. She hopes it makes her look combative and ready to go toe to toe with Bernie; but she has the sneaking suspicion that it makes her look a little closer to the truth of what she is – that is to say, _desperate_ for Bernie; for her friendship, for her respect, for her mere presence. Desperate to stay in her company as long as possible, desperate to keep her there, with her. 

They sit in silence for a beat too long, and Serena begins a determined study of the sticky rings imprinted into the wood of the table. She prods them idly with one fingernail, and wonders if Bernie chose this particular pub because she knows Serena hasn’t set foot anywhere with table rings and obnoxiously loud carpets since about 1992. Wonders if this is some kind of subtle power play, a way to throw her off balance. She feels off kilter and out of place here, in a way she never did in her youth, and she wonders if this is just another part of herself she’s beginning to lose.

Bernie clears her throat, and Serena snatches her hand back. Curls it primly in her lap, and looks at Bernie with what she hopes is attentiveness.

“Serena,” Bernie says, and seems to almost physically straighten in her seat. “Thank you for coming.”

Serena jerks her shoulders in a strange, nervous spasm. It’s only a half-voluntary motion, and she hopes it serves as some kind of acknowledgement. 

Bernie takes a breath. “I’ve spoken to Hanssen. He’s agreed to postpone my transfer until – well, indefinitely, actually.”

Serena stares at her in disbelief. Feels a grin start to break out across her face, and tries desperately to suppress it.

“I like AAU, and I’ve put so much of myself into it – and what’s more, I won’t run away – I won’t be _chased_ away – by rumour or gossip or speculation about my personal life within a professional environment. I don’t want to leave, Serena, and so I won’t. I’m not going to. I’m sick of running away – especially of running away from what I want, just because it seems easy.”

_Oh my God_ , Serena thinks. _This is it. She’s opening up to me. She’s going to talk to me. If I never get anything else of her again, I’ll be satisfied with this_.

“I think you should know,” Bernie continues, and begins to degenerate into the stumbling hesitancy that accompanies any of her blood-from-a-stone personal confessions, “that I didn’t stay for you. I mean – I did – that is, I don’t want you to think that I stayed because – because of anything you said. We’re not – I’m not staying here _for you_ , do you see? I like it here, and I like Holby, and I like working with you – you’re one of the best surgeons I’ve ever worked with, actually. But I would like to… to not _need_ you, quite so much.”

Serena suddenly feels as though the room is too warm. Knows she’s putting the emphasis on the wrong part of that sentence, but can’t stop herself.

“You… need me?” She asks tentatively, and hardly dares to look Bernie in the eye.

Bernie smiles at her, soft and fond, and Serena feels a curious swell in her chest. It’s been so long since Bernie – the _real_ Bernie – has dared to look at her like that – almost a year, Serena thinks – and she hadn’t even recognised how much she had missed it – hadn’t, in fact, even realised it was missing, until this moment. She tries to dab her eyes discretely with the sleeve of her blouse; but Bernie notices her tears, as Bernie has always done, and passes her a napkin from the stack on the windowsill behind her. 

“Of course I need you!” Bernie says, when Serena has pulled herself together. “You were the best friend I ever had. And I know that’s not who we are now – and so much of that is my fault – but – well, I need you, still, all the same.”

_-She needs me she needs me she needs me – she won’t leave, she’s not leaving again and she needs me -_

“But I don’t _want_ to need you as much as I do.” 

Serena feels herself shrivel.

“Well, that’s how this all started, isn’t it?” Bernie asks. “I needed you too much. You’re too many things to me. I… ran… to Kiev because of it. Because I was afraid of it. I stayed on AAU and allowed you to behave towards me in a manner that was _wholly unbefitting to your professional position and to mine_ because… well, how could I give up all that we were? All that you are to me? And still, after that, when I – after the car crash – I thought you were – well. You know what I thought you were. And that’s not healthy, because there’s – oh there’s so much to lose, Serena! One person can’t be everything to someone else, surely you can see that? You can’t be my confidant and my friend – pretty much my only friend, actually - and my colleague and my – my _whatever_. It’s too much to expect from one person. It’s too much pressure, for both of us, to be so _much_ to someone. Because if we lose each other, we lose _everything_.”

Bernie reaches out a tentative hand, and taps Serena’s wrist gently; waits for Serena to nod her acknowledgement before continuing.

“So I think it would be best – for both of us – if we were just… close colleagues. We can – we can be friends still, if you’d like? We could go to Albie’s together and… and get lunch, and do all the things work friends do. But you and I – I don’t think we should spend as much time together as we used to. And I think maybe I need to branch out a bit, and make some more friends, outside of work, and maybe we could learn to rely less on each other, so… so recent events don’t happen again.”

“Are you still angry with me?” Serena butts in suddenly. Feels like what Bernie is suggesting can’t possibly be anything but another punishment.

“No! No, we’re both to blame for this – this co-dependency. It’s on both of us. And we’ve both made mistakes. And I think maybe… maybe you need to forgive me, properly, and not be forced into it by circumstance, and I need to learn to move past this, and – it’s for the best, isn’t it?”

Bernie stares at her with wide, earnest eyes, and Serena can do nothing but nod miserably, though she feels every particle of herself riot against it. If this is what Bernie wants, she can’t deny her it. She can’t deny Berenice Wolfe anything.

“Alright,” she says, and it tastes like bile. “Work friends, then.”

Bernie smiles at her in relief, fine lines crinkling around her eyes, and slides a tenner across the sticky table top. 

“A bottle, for old time’s sake?”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen lads, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that this will have a happy ending, but apparently it’s at least one more: I promise this will have a happy ending, don’t worry, please chill. 
> 
> Someone also asked me if I took prompts, which I never really thought of before, but you know what, if any of you do want to send me prompts, please feel free to hit me up on tumblr @obsessionishealthy.

When Serena gets home, she cries. 

She tries to be quiet – doesn’t want to wake an irate Jason at 12:30am when he needs to be up early for work tomorrow – but the wine and the late hour combine to make everything feel slow and clumsy, and she bounces off furniture and door frames on her way to her bedroom. She feels as though she’s moving through slow running waters, her limbs too hot and heavy to control. She accidentally rattles the bedframe off Jason’s adjoining wall when she sits down, and it only makes her cry harder. 

She’s tired, and disappointed, and a little bit drunk, and she feels uncharacteristically sorry for herself. She doesn’t even try to calm down. Doesn’t want to - wants this single self-indulgent opportunity to wallow in her misery before she has to behave like a responsible adult in the morning, and be responsible for everyone else's thoughts, and feelings, and welfare – and climbs into bed in her coat and shoes, aware that she's being irrational and unable to stop herself. She can feel the underside of her jaw beginning to chap as tears collect and dry in the hollows of her throat, and takes perverse delight in the sting. She wonders, in a small part of her mind, if she’s being overdramatic – if this is somehow teenage, this excess of emotion over something so trivial – wonders then if it’s more teenage to argue with herself and say Bernie Wolfe is nothing trivial to _her_ – but has passed the point where she could’ve stopped herself from crying, even if she'd wanted to. _Bernie could’ve stopped me crying_ , she thinks miserably, and even her mental voice hiccoughs in distress.

She buries her face in her pillow and wails. 

Serena isn’t sure of quite how long it takes for Jason to have had enough of listening to his aunt sniffing and sobbing through the wall, but by the time he pushes open her door, she has worked herself into such a hysterical state she’s almost gagging on air. He shuffles into the room with a plate of toast and a glass of water, and looks as though he’s frightened enough to start crying hysterically himself. 

“Auntie Serena?” he asks, and the fear and uncertainty in his voice is enough to pull her head out of the pillow, to force her to get herself together. 

The last thing in the world she wants to do is upset Jason. 

She peers at him through puffy eyes, and tries to smile. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t worry. I’m sorry I woke you, you can go back to bed, come on.” 

She moves to get up, to shepherd him to his own room and check he’s okay, but he holds up a hand in a way she knows looks uncannily like one of her own gestures.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. The combination of bluntness and care that single question contains is inimitably Jason, and she feels a surge of affection for him.

“Why don’t you come and sit next to me?” Serena pats the rumpled sheet beside her.

Jason bristles in horror, and Serena wonders what she’s said this time.

“I don’t sit on other people’s beds, Auntie Serena! Beds are breeding grounds for all kinds of unsavoury microscopic life, even when you wash before you get in and wear clean pyjamas. You’ve just had your outdoor clothes in yours – do you know what kind of microscopic dirt is on your outdoor clothes? That’s why I wash my sheets twice a week, and I never sit on my bed in my work uniform. I hope you are going to wash your sheets?” 

He stares at her expectantly, and she can tell she’ll have a meltdown on her hands if she doesn’t agree.

“First thing in the morning, Jason, I promise.”

“Will you wash them on 60?” 

“Yes, Jason.”

He nods, satisfied, seems to take a moment to collect himself, and offers her the plate of toast. 

“Here. My mum always brought me toast when I was upset. She said it was good for calming your stomach. She also offered to listen to me if I ever wanted to talk about it. I suppose I can do that too, if you really need me to, but I do need to be awake at 7am tomorrow, and you have already cut into my desired 8.5 hours sleep by quite a significant amount, so I would prefer it if you could keep it under 15 minutes.”

Serena makes a show of gratefully chewing the toast. “No, Jason, don’t worry. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

He stares at her perceptively. “This is about Bernie, isn’t it?”

Serena nods miserably.

“I thought so. It’s always about Bernie if you’re crying.” He puts the glass of water on her bedside table, and makes to leave the room. “Goodnight, Auntie Serena.”

She finishes the toast, because she knows Jason will check – will show his care in the best way he knows how, by lecturing her, if she doesn’t – and manages to kick off her shoes before she crawls into bed.

She gets up as usual in the morning, and drives herself and Jason to work without a whimper, because she is Serena Campbell, and if there’s one thing she can do, it’s endure.

//

After a quiet but interminably long shift, all Serena wants to do is go home, wash her sheets (because yes, okay, Jason freaked her out a little bit in the car when he began to detail exactly _what kind_ of microscopic particles exist in beds,) have a glass of wine, and go to bed. But she also knows that Raf has been eyeing her with concern all day, and is practically vibrating with the need to invite her out for drinks and nurture her like a Scottish mother hen. 

She decides to save him the bother of asking; sidles up to him ten minutes before they both clock off, and whispers “Albies?” 

He smiles at her, and nods sympathetically. Offers to buy the first round. 

They walk there together, dart across the dark car park, and kick up puddles in the rain. Serena manages to laugh when she catches sight of the pair of them in the mirror above the door, drenched and sopping, and thinks how lucky she is, to have a friend like Raf. Thinks about how sad it is, that Bernie _doesn’t_ have a friend like Raf, and then chastised herself for thinking of Bernie at all.

“Alright, Serena,” Raf says almost as soon as they’re seated, unbearably earnest as always. “What’s wrong.” 

She considers telling him to piss off and mind his own business, but remembers how much she _likes_ Raf – enjoys his company, trusts his opinion – and she thinks that she could do to talk about it with someone who is willing to offer more than 15 minutes of their time and a slice of toast. So she looks over her shoulder to check there are no F1s about flapping their little ears, takes a fortifying sip of wine, and talks. She tells him about the museum, and Imelda, and Bernie discovering the truth; about Bernie’s horror and shame, her humiliation at discovering she’d concocted an entire false life with a woman who wasn’t even speaking to her; about her transfer request, Serena pouring out her heart, and Bernie’s decision to distance herself from anything they could have had, or might have been. She can’t decide if she feels lighter for getting it all out there – would like to attest to the healing power of friendship and sharing, but thinks that ultimately, it just hurts, to know that she can never have what she wants so badly.

Raf stares at her, and offers her a peanut, and Serena suddenly feels like somehow, he doesn’t understand at all. 

“Well, what about what you want?” he asks, and Serena thinks he sounds foolish – as though he hasn’t listened to a single word she just said.

“I have to respect her decision,” she says, patiently – her stores of patience are not infinite, but Raf is only trying to help her, she reminds herself. “She’s had no… no agency in this whole thing since she came back from Kiev, and I have to – I want to – give that back to her. The right to choose.”

“You had no choice in the whole Kiev scenario though,” Raf points out over his half-pint.

Serena gets a whiff of beer, stale and overpowering and too reminiscent of Edward, and suddenly wishes Bernie were here, and she was splitting a bottle of wine with her instead.

“Maybe that’s true,” Serena says, and tries to subtly lean back from the smell. “But she wanted to leave. I couldn’t make her stay. I want us to both have choices. And this is hers. You can’t force someone into loving you in the ways you want them to.”

“But what about this whole marriage thing? Surely she must have -” 

Serena shrugs. Wishes the conversation could be over, finds that talking about it isn’t really helping at all. 

“Even if that were the case, it was this…” she pauses, tries to work out how to articulate everything she wants to say. “It was this odd, fully formed domestic life, but it had none of the preamble or… or any kind of foundation required to get it to that point. It wasn’t real. Sometimes I thought it was - felt like it could be - but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. It would have collapsed eventually, without a solid base to rest on. I don’t know, maybe it would have just muddied the waters, to jump into something after that. And she doesn’t want it anymore, anyway. So that’s that. Case closed.”

She pauses to take a sip of wine.

“We get to be ‘ _work friends_ ’ instead,” she spits, and wishes it didn’t sound quite so bitter.

“But you’ll always love her,” Raf says, and it doesn’t sound like a question.

Serena nods, and shrugs. “I suppose so. I’ll just have to hope. Wait and hope.”

//

Serena makes Raf switch to wine, and they’re only three quarters of their way through their first bottle when she sees his eyes widen at something over her shoulder.

“What?” She asks, and can’t help but smirk at the almost comical look of shock on his face.

He gestures unsubtly at the door. “ _Bernie’s here_.”

Serena spins on her stool so quickly she hears the silk of her shirt snag on the cracked leather. Bernie hasn’t been to Albie’s with them – _hasn’t been invited to Albie’s with them_ , that nasty little voice reminds Serena – since before she went to Kiev. Serena doesn’t know what Bernie did with her evenings when she came back – she had hoped, at the time, that Bernie slunk home to her damp little flat and wallowed in loneliness and regret, but now she hopes desperately that that isn’t true. 

She thinks it might be though, by the way Bernie is peeking her head so tentatively round the door. She looks as hesitant as Serena has ever seen her, though she’s covering it well – as though she doesn’t quite dare step inside, expects to be rebuffed and sent back out into the cold. 

Serena watches the yellow light of the bar warm Bernie’s face into softness, and can’t help but want to help her. Thinks that maybe if Bernie stretches her social wings, re-establishes friendships and makes new ones, then she might not be so afraid of Serena. 

“Bernie!” She stands on the bar of her stool and waves at her, beckons her over with a smile. 

Bernie smiles back, full-bodied and wide with relief – relief at being welcomed back into the fold at last, Serena thinks – and weaves her way through chattering bodies towards their table.

“Hi,” she says giddily, eyes bright. 

“Sit down, sit down,” Serena chides her, suddenly desperate to be as accommodating as possible. 

Raf blinks at her incredulously, and Serena stares at him until he shrugs, and heads to the bar to get an extra glass for Bernie.

Bernie perches herself on the spare stool, nursing her coat in her lap as though she’s preparing for a quick getaway. 

“Relax, for goodness sake,” Serena snaps, suddenly sick at heart that so much has changed between them. 

Bernie jerks in surprise, and drops her coat on the floor without a word. 

“Sorry.” 

They sit in an uncomfortable silence until Raf returns. 

//

Serena can tell that Raf is still a little resentful of Bernie, but he hides it well; and by the end of their third shared bottle, his slightly forced friendliness seems more real. He’d always liked Bernie, before – secretly thought she was quite brilliant, Serena thinks, had experienced his own kind of betrayal when she’d left – and now, though there’s a hesitancy to their interactions that never existed before, they seem to be getting along well enough again. Bernie seems to be glowing with happiness; and when Morven arrives, and pulls in a stool next to her with a smile and a warm embrace, Serena thinks Bernie’s face might just crack in two. 

She drifts in and out of the conversation, content for once to just listen. Bernie is muttering something about how she needs a hobby, and Morven offers to take her to the shelter with her where she volunteers if she wants to get out. Serena watches Bernie nod enthusiastically, fringe flopping, as she says she’d like to help people, that it would be just the ticket, thanks Morven. Serena thinks Bernie’s mostly just grateful that people are speaking to her like a friend again. 

They stay there, the four of them, until last call. Serena looks at Bernie, doubled over at something Raf has said – something Serena would no doubt had teasingly backhanded him for, had she been listening – and wonders how they ever drifted so far from this. Hopes this is just the beginning of regaining it. 

_This is what life should be_ , she thinks, and grins round the table at her team. _This is what life should be_.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely not the best offering I've ever given you; but it is, I think, the longest, if that makes up for the quality? And yes, maybe half of it could have been cut, but then what excuse would I have for a late update?  
> Anyway, I have the worst head cold known to man, and I think my brain is going to drop out of my skull at any moment - but I did promise fortnightly updates, so compromises must be made!

Serena loves Bernie. She thinks she could love every person Bernie has ever been. She certainly loves every version of Bernie she has ever known. It was not even that she had ceased to love Bernie throughout the whole mess of Ukraine, and its aftermath – it was only that she had ceased to count it as a blessing, for a while. But she doesn’t feel that way anymore – hasn’t felt that way since she nearly lost her. Thinks now that how she feels about Bernie is one of the greatest things to ever happen to her – one of the greatest things she has ever _felt_. 

Serena has never loved Bernie quite as much as she loves her now; _the way she is now_ – like she was before Ukraine, but not _quite_ the same as she had been. Serena watches as Bernie grows back into herself, bit by bit – and then beyond herself, into everything she could never quite manage to be, and she feels her heart inflate with fierce pride. 

Bernie carries herself differently – that’s the first thing Serena notices. Before Kiev, she had alternated between a tense sort of bullish arrogance – a defensive, standoffish, swaggering confidence that just dared someone to challenge her – and the stiff, pained limp of a woman who can’t admit her own, new, physical limitations. After her return, she had only seemed to sag more under the weight of her own cowardice. She had looked so tired, and broken down, that Serena feels her stomach curl unpleasantly every time she thinks about it. But there is something new about Bernie now, Serena thinks, that glows out of her, and makes a slight but discernible difference to everything she does. Bernie has always been charismatic – has always been one of those brilliant and shining people who can hold a room – but now she seems brighter than ever, and even Fletch warms back up to her. Serena catches them gossiping in the break room, and smiles when she sees him finally pocket Bernie’s last packet of milky buttons for Mikey. Bernie leaves, smirking her satisfied little smirk, and swaggers back onto the ward as though she’s just successfully performed a challenging thoracic surgery. 

Serena initially can’t quite work out what has made the difference in Bernie. They don’t see an awful lot of each other, anymore - not as much as Serena would like, in any case. It’s not until Morven mentions that she’d passed Bernie in town on Saturday, with a young woman who looked so much like her – _it’s clearly a family nose_ , Morven says – that she could only be the formerly estranged Charlotte Dunn, that Serena realises that Bernie is _happy_.

Of course, then Serena begins to wonder if Bernie has never been happy before, in all the time they’ve known each other. Wonders if there was too much detritus – guilt over her marriage, the rejection of her children, the loss of a brilliant career in the RAMC – for Bernie to sustain any kind of positive feeling beyond its single, immediate moment. She thinks that, if Elinor and Jason had rejected _her_ , if she’d made sacrifices that meant nothing and watched her entire life crumble around her, she wouldn’t be able to rest until she’d fixed it. Knows that Bernie must have felt the same. 

So now Bernie finally seems to have found… whatever had been missing, Serena wants to be nothing more than to be happy _for_ her. She _is_ happy for her, she supposes. Is happy that Bernie smiles more easily, that she looks so much less tired even when she’s working an early shift, and seems to take unprecedented delight in even the most mundane of surgeries. But she can’t help but resent not being the _cause_ of this happiness – that she doesn’t even seem to be a contributing factor. 

She wonders whether she doesn’t love Bernie enough. Wonders if she should be glad that Bernie is doing so well without her, if she should just be thankful that Bernie has managed to find meaning in a life she hasn’t really chosen to be living. She decides that that can’t possibly be the case – knows that she loves Bernie as much as anyone can love anyone. She doesn’t think she’s capable of loving anyone more than that, and doesn’t think it’s a fault in herself; decides that it’s only human nature to long to be a part of Bernie’s new happiness, and that no one in the world has a pure enough heart to celebrate their own exclusion from it. 

It's not all bad, she supposes, this new distance between them. She enjoys being able to enjoy Bernie without having to worry about her. She’s always felt _responsible_ for her, in some way; always wanted to make sure she’s eating well, and sleeping well, and keeping on top of her paperwork. Always felt personally responsible for Bernie’s wellbeing, and as strange as it is to suddenly feel so unnecessary to it, she finds herself sleeping a little more easily, too – feels a little of the burden slip from her shoulders, and she wonders if Bernie was right – if it was too much, to be so much to each other. Maybe it’s nice for Bernie to not _need_ Serena in the same way. 

She worries though, when she sees Bernie smiling down at her phone instead of across the desk at her, or walking out of Albie’s arm in arm with a tipsy Morven instead of Serena, that maybe now Bernie doesn’t need her so much, she won’t _want_ her so much.

//

They have developed something of an awkward pas de deux on the days they share shifts. It’s not that they’re not speaking to each other, per se – they’re grown adults with a ward to run, and despite what previous behaviour might indicate, they are capable of at least a modicum of professionalism – but there is a residual awkwardness between them. The dissolution of what they were, with nothing new to replace it, has left them floundering between everything they’ve ever been to each other – in turns they are brusque and cold, flirtatious and solicitous, and Serena doesn’t think that Bernie herself is any better at working out how she’s going to behave on any given day than Serena is. 

It is an unusual quirk of this new dynamic, that Serena often comes in to the office to find more than half of her paperwork has already been completed – and so poorly, that she can only assume that Bernie is the culprit. She feels awfully teenaged for wondering what it ‘ _means_ ’ – but she can’t quite help hoping that it’s some sort of covert signal. A sign, however small, that Bernie… well, _what_? Still loves her, still cares about her, still wants to lighten her burden? She tells herself that she’s behaving like a foolish old woman; that it doesn’t matter, anyway. The quality of the work submitted by her ward and under her name is of more importance to her than dillydallying about what exactly Bernie Wolfe is thinking about; and Bernie’s particular style of admin is not up to her standards.

She goes in search of Bernie on their next shared shift, and catches her at the Nurses’ Station with Fletch. They’re splitting a cheese sandwich between them, and Serena wonders what kind of iron immune system the pair of them have, to risk eating anything on the ward.

“Ms Wolfe?” she asks, and wonders when she’ll be brave enough to call her Bernie again.

Bernie looks up expectantly, cheeks bulging. Serena watches in amusement as she tries to swallow what looks to be her entire half of the sandwich without chewing.

“Could I see you in the office for a moment?”

Bernie nods, and bounces out of her chair with that little bit of extra enthusiasm she’s been carrying recently. Serena leads the way. She wonders if Bernie is staring at her from behind. Wonders if she’s looking at her legs, or her neck, or her hair. Chides herself for her girlish fantasies, but can’t help peering over her shoulder in the reflection of the glass of the door. Bernie seems to be studiously examining her fingernails, and Serena feels herself sag a little, disappointed.

They prepare to settle themselves in the office, and Bernie looks for a moment as though she’s making to perch herself in her customary spot on Serena’s desk. Serena feels her breath catch a little in anticipation – but then Bernie swerves, and plonks herself into her own chair instead, and suddenly the stacks of files seem like an ocean between them. 

“What’s the problem?” Bernie asks, and Serena can tell by the almost unnoticeable quirk of her lip that Bernie doesn’t think there’s a problem at all – that she thinks she’s at her best and there’s nothing she’s doing that she can be pulled up on.

“You’ve been doing my paperwork,” Serena says eventually. It comes out like more of a statement than a question.

“Yes.”

Serena can see that little quirk beginning to twitch wider, and knows that Bernie is anticipating a shower of grateful praise. She almost wants to wipe the grin off Bernie’s face, to teach her a lesson about being presumptuous and smug, but shuts herself down immediately, because Bernie is trying to help, and Serena doesn’t want to push her away completely.

“Why?” 

“Why not? Don’t you like having it all done for you, when you come in?”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it,” she begins – and there, she sees, the corner of Bernie’s mouth begin to waver with uncertainty – “it’s just that – you’re not very good at it. And -" 

“And you run a tight ship,” Bernie finishes, mouth twisting in resignation. “I understand.”

Serena hastens to jump in, to reassure Bernie, all big disappointed eyes and golden curls – but then she remembers that Bernie was employed by the army for 20 years, and she doesn’t need to be mollycoddled. That mollycoddling Bernie Wolfe is what got them into this position in the first place. 

“I prefer to do it myself. I like to know that what I’m submitting is up to my standards,” Serena says decisively. “But thank you for the gesture.”

Bernie nods in acceptance.

“I am terrible,” she finally admits, and takes a stack of Serena’s files out of her own drawer. “I suppose you can have these back then.”

Bernie makes to leave the room, then stops in the doorway, as though something has just occurred to her. She turns, suddenly resolute.

“It’s just that – I wanted to help out a bit. You do far more than your share of the paperwork, and I keep seeming to end up with all the interesting cases – and we’re co-leads - _equals_ \- and I should pull my weight.”

Serena almost laughs. 

“Bernie,” she says slowly, and tries desperately to sound like she’s not patronising her. “I have an MBA from Harvard; I think I can manage a couple of NHS patient discharge forms.”

“Well – we could at least take the good surgeries together then?” Bernie asks – looks strangely vulnerable, Serena thinks. She always does, when she’s not showboating for effect. 

“Alright. I’d like that,” Serena says, and feels her traitorous mouth stretching into a too pleased and too adoring grin. She turns her face to the screen of her monitor – is afraid to let Bernie see an expression she knows is familiar to her – too much like the way she looked at her, before. 

“I’ve missed you, you know,” Bernie says suddenly; softly, as though she doesn’t want Serena to hear her at all. 

“You – you have?”

Serena feels her pulse beat, staccato, in her neck.

“Yes; in theatre, you know. Raf’s good, but he’s not… we don’t –"

“I know.” Serena whispers. And she does. There is no one else like them – _for them_ – in theatre. They are there, at least, kindred spirits. 

“Okay. Well. Don’t overwork yourself.” 

Serena smiles softly.

“I won’t.”

Bernie leaves her with a look that Serena is almost tempted to label as concerned. 

She wonders, for the first time, if the excuse Bernie gave for her crash when she first woke up had been the truth. Whether she really was rushing in to allow Serena to clock off early and relax. She never gave it any real thought before – assumed it was only the fanciful invention of a sore and swollen brain. But she remembers, now, how many shifts the notoriously tardy Bernie Wolfe had seemed to just turn up early for over the course of those three months. Realises that Bernie is still looking out for her in the best ways she knows how. 

Thinks that of course, as much as she might feel responsible for Bernie’s wellbeing, Bernie feels responsible for hers, too. Because that’s what love is.

//

It is primarily through their encounters across a surgical table that Serena learns new details of Bernie’s life now. It’s not quite like it was when there was only friendship and flirtation between them – but nor is it like the chilly days of the post-Ukrainian freeze, and so she supposes that she should be thankful for small mercies. 

She learns that Bernie’s taken up kickboxing – and, as she tells her shyly, from behind her surgical mask, has proven to be rather good at it. Serena smiles at her proudly, and asks if she’d ever expected anything else. 

She thinks she sees Bernie wink. 

“You never can tell. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Serena is glad that Bernie can’t see her gaping mouth.

 _Is this something we’re doing now?_

But Bernie seems intent on reattaching something in the patient’s forearm, and Serena wonders if she’s reading too much into things. Tells herself to stop being ridiculous, and refocuses her attention on the task at hand.

Bernie has made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear.

…

The next time they pick up a scalpel together, they’re elbows deep in a fireman’s abdomen, and at least an hour over the official end of their shift. Serena can feel the muscles of her back starting to knot uncomfortably, the beginnings of a tension headache collecting above her left eye. She wonders if she needs glasses; thinks she’ll have to book herself in at the opticians when she next takes Jason in for his check-up. She remembers her student days, when she could go for 24 hours straight celebrating the day after her final exam, a bottle of cheap red in one hand and, on more than one occasion, a stolen traffic cone in the other. _And she could still read the small text on the drinks menu_. Serena McKinnie wouldn’t have been done in by a regular old day at work. Serena Campbell, on the other hand…

God, she hates getting old.

She chances a glance up at Bernie, and expects to see her beginning to flag, too. They’re the same age, after all, and Bernie has abused her body far more intensely than Serena has. She almost hopes to catch her in a yawn, or to see her trying to roll out the still residual post-surgery tightness in her left shoulder, just so she knows that she’s not alone in suffering the indignities of ageing. But Bernie looks almost… perky. 

Serena wonders how she can look so fresh 10 hours into what was only supposed to be an 8 hour shift. She wonders if she’s allowed to ask, and then almost immediately decides she’s too curious to avoid it.

“So tell me, Ms Wolfe – _suction please, Fran_ – what’s got you glowing like the cat that’s got the cream?” 

She focusses on prodding around the bowel in search of lacerations as she waits for Bernie’s answer.

“Well,” Bernie begins, and Serena can hear her struggling to modulate the pitch of her voice into unaffected softness. “It’s a good day, isn’t it?”

Serena peers down at the mangled viscera in front of her.

“…It is?”

“Ah – well. Not for this gentleman, obviously,” Bernie hastens to add. “But the sun is shining, and the plasterers should have finished doing my living room three hours ago, and –"

Bernie gives up on feigning any semblance of calmness, and Serena can see her smile even through her mask. “The kids are coming for dinner tonight – _both of them_. They’re coming to dinner at my house!”

“Oh Bernie,” Serena says, and she feels her own wide smile beginning to spread unbidden. “That’s wonderful! Oh, I’m so happy for you.” 

They beam at each other, across the poor unfortunate soul lying prone on the table between them. Bernie is almost glowing with pride, and Serena is suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to kiss her. 

She shakes herself, and feels her headache give a protesting throb. 

“When was the last time you saw them both together?” She asks instead, and tries to ignore the way the theatre nurses are waiting for Bernie’s answer too, with baited breath and swivelling heads.

“It must be before the divorce,” Bernie says, eyes on the patient, as Serena’s should be. “So... almost a year?” 

“And they’re… okay with it now?” asks Serena, in what she hopes is a delicate manner. She’s been dying for information since Morven mentioned seeing the Wolfe girls in town. 

“I think so,” Bernie nods. “Charlotte took a bit longer to come round than Cam, but then, Marcus always was her favourite. But we’ve been meeting up for coffee recently – neutral ground, isn’t it, your local homogenous Costa – and we’ve talked for – well, for the first time in forever, maybe. And I think… maybe we have more in common than she realises?” 

Bernie looks up, embarrassed and unsure suddenly – as though she doesn’t want to lay claim to a daughter as wonderful as she clearly believes her own to be.

“I’m sure you are,” Serena hastens to reassure her. “You certainly look similar.”

“Pardon?”

“Morven,” Serena explains, surgical thread in hand. “She saw you in town the other weekend. Said the resemblance was _undeniable_.” 

Bernie’s smile, if possible, grows even wider. 

“I suppose we do look alike,” she says, pleased. 

They return their attention to the table, and Serena can tell that Bernie is trying to school her face into an expression more appropriate to a serious surgical procedure.

Her own aching back is forgotten.  
…

Serena is learning to treasure these brief moments between them in theatre.

In the heady summer days of the heights of their friendship, when it seemed as though she saw the world through a haze of Bernie, it felt as though they never left each other’s side. Theatre then was just an extension of everything else – of quiet coffees before the morning kicked off, and long evenings propped up in deck chairs on Serena’s patio, giggling into glasses of wine. Of being surrounded by _each other_ , all the time. 

Nowadays, aside from the team bonding trips to Albie’s, Serena sees nothing of Bernie beyond the doors of AAU. Theatre is the only place they have, where nothing seems to have changed. But of course, it has. Everything has changed, Serena thinks, and theatre is just its own kind of pretence. So she cherishes it now, in a way she never did before. Recognises the potency of being in perfect synchronicity with someone – of being so _close_ to someone, even if it’s only for a few hours. 

She doesn’t want to monopolise Bernie’s time – has to actively try, to ask Raf or Fletch to Albie’s instead of Bernie, to say goodbye at the end of a shift instead of suggesting dinner. She knows that Bernie wants to do more things independently of her and their circle of acquaintances at Holby, and she thinks it’s – well, healthy, actually. But that doesn’t make it any easier. She still wants to spend every moment of the day with Bernie, having deprived herself of her so long – thinks she won’t tire of her until she’s had her fill of her. But Bernie always seems to be somewhere else – at the shelter with Morven, or at some traditional ale bar with her kickboxing friends.

Serena unthinkingly tries to extend an invitation one day, after a particularly exciting surgery. Her pulse is racing, and she’s on an adrenaline high, having saved a young girl against all odds; together, as they always should be. As all their best surgeries always are. And all she can see is Bernie’s triumphant grin, and it’s directed at her – at _Serena_ – and it’s out before she can stop herself.

“ _Albie’s_? I’m buying.”

She watches the grin falter a bit, and feels suddenly cold. 

“Oh, Serena… I can’t, not tonight. I’m sorry.”

Serena, for some stupid, desperate reason, thinks that if she pushes, she can salvage some kind of dignity; feels the sting of rejection too keenly, too personally, to just nod and shuffle off to the office. 

“Why, what could you possibly be doing?” Her tone, she realises, is a little too incredulous, a little too light. “Do you have a _hot date_?”

Bernie blinks at her; gives her the patented Bernie Wolfe deer in the headlights stare.

Serena blanches. “ _No_. You haven’t. Tell me you haven’t.”

Bernie looks suddenly desperate to be anywhere else.

“I can’t – I mean, I have - I do. Look, I – have to go, I’m already late.”

Serena watches as Bernie jogs off down the corridor. She doesn’t look back.


	16. Chapter 16

Serena hears her before she sees her. That loud, braying, honk of a laugh. She thinks she should hate it – has never heard a sound more ridiculous in her life, let alone a sound coming from the mouth of a human being. She thinks that, if Bernie were a character in a novel, her laugh would immediately exclude her from the coveted position of protagonist. No universally beloved heroine should honk. She should tinkle, or titter, or simply smile serenely. Bernie’s laugh could clear a room in seconds. But – _luckily for me_ , Serena thinks – Bernie isn’t a character in a novel, to be neatly boxed up by archetype or narrative function. She’s a woman. A flawed, contradictory, _infuriating_ woman. She’s so much better than any silver voiced heroine, because she’s _real_. And so, Serena loves her laugh, because it is part of _Bernie_.

She might love it a little less though, when she is laughing with someone else.

In fact, it sets Serena’s teeth on edge.

She doesn’t know what possesses her – but she wants to see what – _who_ \- makes Bernie laugh like that. Wonders, secretly, if she can compare. She’s only heading home to bed – has taken the night shift, again, as some sort of half-baked, self-flagellative punishment – and has nowhere else to be; so she squirrels herself behind the outside corner of Wyvern Wing, and waits for Bernie to materialise. Does not consider whether or not it is a good idea, because she can still hear her laughing. 

Bernie eventually appears from where the overhang of the building has been concealing her from view, arm in arm with some… _woman_. Which is… fine, Serena reminds herself sternly, because Bernie is her own person, and they are both good feminists, and they understand that _people don’t own people_. She just… wishes it was her. It _was_ her, once – temporarily – _almost_. 

She wants to leave. Has seen more than enough. Wishes, actually, that she hadn’t see anything at all, but finds that she can’t quite make herself move. Feels as though she might miss something vital if she doesn’t stay, some crucial piece of the puzzle that is Bernie Wolfe. She watches as they stop at the ramp outside the entrance, still laughing and bent almost double, heads close enough to touch. Watches them straighten, brush each other down. Tries to look away, because she knows what’s coming next – _wants_ to look away more than anything, and hates herself when she doesn’t – because yes, there it is, it’s happening right in front of her, and she just has to stand here, with a drainpipe dripping on her shoulder and her left foot twisted in a grate, and watch the woman she’s in love with kiss someone else. 

_Well. Right. Fine. Okay. Good._

She feels like a voyeur. 

The date must have gone well. Serena wonders if Bernie spent her day off with this woman too; if they’ve been in each other’s company the exact length of time she and Bernie have been apart. She wonders how long Bernie has been seeing her – they certainly look comfortable together. Not that it’s any of her business, of course.

Nevertheless, she inches closer. 

“I’ll see you at the weekend?” Bernie is asking, entangling their fingers between them like school girls. 

The spaces between Serena’s own fingers feel suddenly empty. She clenches her fists.

She spares a glance for the other woman. Attractive enough, she supposes. Pretty, definitely, but not beautiful – not beautiful like Bernie Wolfe is beautiful. She must be around their age, maybe, with muscular calves and a neat French roll holding back her hair. She looks put together and successful, but ultimately, forgettable. Serena doubts she’d know her for sure if she saw her in the street. She’s sure she’s a lovely lady – Bernie would never give her time to someone _truly_ awful – but she’s almost inclined to hate her on principle. She wonders if Jason would call that an irrational response. 

Bernie heads into the hospital without sparing a glance in Serena’s direction, and waves to her date from the door. 

Serena finds that she cannot move for some time – is still hiding behind the ramp long after Bernie has gone inside. She feels exhausted, now the adrenaline has worn off. Feels the ache of the cold in every single one of her bones. She’s standing in a puddle, and her socks are damp, though she’s been there long enough for the water to begin to warm unpleasantly from the heat of her feet. She finds that she can’t think; that she is incapable of processing anything beyond the ache in her chest, the profound and definite sense of loss. She realises that this is it: _the severing of the final tie_. 

She hadn’t taken Bernie seriously enough, when she said that she needed to move past… _them_. Had smiled and nodded, and had thought – had _convinced herself_ \- that she understood. But now all hope of any kind of reconciliation has suddenly been denied to her, she can admit that there was a part of her – a small, foolish part – that thought that Bernie just needed a bit of time; just needed to prove a point – about independence, or self-creation, or self-determination – before eventually just circling back into orbit around planet Serena. And maybe, she thinks, that’s the problem. Maybe she was just too focussed on the makeup of her own mind to consider what kind of processes were happening in Bernie’s. Maybe she was too quick to judge Bernie by her own standards; or too quick to judge herself held highly in Bernie’s.

“Ms Campbell?” 

Fletch’s voice breaks through her reverie.

“Ye –" her voice breaks, and she tries again. “Yes, Fletch? Is there a problem?”

She almost hopes there is - wants to be called back inside so she can see Bernie.

“Oh, well, it’s nothing. Just… your shift finished more than 30 minutes ago, and you’re still standing here. Are you alright?”

“Perfectly alright, thank you, Nurse Fletcher. Just… enjoying this lovely weather before I get going,” she says, and beats her palms together briskly.

Fletch looks dubiously around the car park, damp and grey with the rain of a late winter’s morning. 

Serena wonders if he knows anything about Bernie’s date, since they seem to be such good friends now. Finds that she resents him for it, if he does.

“Well, I must be going. I’ll be in next week.”

“Got the weekend off have you, Ms Campbell?” Fletch asks jovially, but she’s already walking away. 

She throws him a smile and a nod over her shoulder. 

She goes home, and goes to bed. Lies there in the darkness, and wonders what on earth she’s going to do with all that free time.

//

She ends up spending a weekend with Jason – feels she has been neglecting him recently, and offers to take him over to London for a couple of days. She expects a lecture about short-notice plans and the need for a structured daily schedule at least a week in advance; but he tells her that, since he had no particular plans anyway, he had factored in space for unforeseen activities, and agrees to the trip with good grace. And it’s nice: she loves her nephew, and she loves spending time with him. Loves learning about his interests, and his obsessions, and hearing his interesting facts as they walk around The Natural History Museum; loves that he takes a look at her dragging her feet and offers to take her to Oxford Street, even though the crowds make him anxious and he knows she’ll spend too long in United Colours of Benetton. Serena is _full_ of love – has so much of it, to dole out to anyone who lets her – and Jason is one of the things she loves most of all. 

Now that she’s removed from the immediacy of the situation – out of Wyvern and out of Bernie’s company – she can think more clearly. She realises that, however much she loves Bernie, she does not love _only_ Bernie. She loves Jason, and she loves Elinor; she loves her job, and her friends, and spending time in her garden when the sun is shining. If Bernie doesn’t want her, anymore, Serena can survive. 

Serena always survives. 

So she goes into work on the Tuesday morning, and thinks that she’s ready to face Bernie. As colleagues. 

As friends.

As nothing more.

She picks up some coffee from Pulses, buys Bernie a sesame seed bacon roll, because she prefers savoury food in the morning – _Serena doesn’t understand it, loves a pain au chocolat or a chocolate chip muffin, but bows to preference_ – and heads over to AAU. 

Bernie is already in the office when she arrives, feet propped up to rest on one of the guest chairs. She seems uncharacteristically engrossed in a stack of patient files, and jumps almost comically at the sound of the door opening.

“I didn’t have my shoes on the seat,” she says, and tries to swing her chair round under the desk. 

Serena raises her eyebrow. 

Bernie tries a different tactic. “They’re clean?”

Serena doesn’t dignify it with an answer, just pops Bernie’s roll and her coffee on her desk.

“Brought you breakfast.”

Bernie beams.

“Thank you! I – ah – I actually brought your coffee for you, too.” She gestures at Serena’s own desk, to a paper bag Serena knows contains one of her beloved pain au chocolat, and a takeaway cup in the biggest size Pulses produces.

“I suppose we’ll just have to drink two cups each,” Serena shrugs, and settles herself in the chair Bernie had been using as a footstool. Shuffles it closer to Bernie in an attempt to re-establish that easy unawareness of space they’d once had. Wonders if it can ever be recreated, when she’s so conscious now, of every inch of air between them. 

She is determined to deal with this latest of life’s disappointments with as much grace as she can muster. Can’t quite stop herself from conceiving of it in those terms, and continually chides herself for thinking of it as a disappointment at all. She will take Bernie in any capacity she can have her, and be grateful for it. Will always be grateful, for Bernie. 

She smiles across the space between them; tries to convey all that she’s feeling in one expression.

Bernie tries to smile back, tentatively; peers out from under her fringe, in the way she does when she’s not quite comfortable.

Serena shuffles the chair back an inch or two.

“I – well, I wanted to apologise,” Bernie begins at last. 

Serena blinks in confusion. Reels back a little. “Whatever for?”

“Well for the way I just – dropping it on you, like that.” 

Serena frowns. 

“That I had a – a date,” Bernie clarifies. “I know it was – well, it’s a – there’s not really any _precedent_ for a situation like this, and –"

“Oh, no,” Serena interrupts, desperate to stop Bernie from speaking, suddenly. “No, not at all! I mean, really, I should be apologising. It’s – really, none of my business. We agreed, that – that wasn’t on the table for – for us anymore. And I shouldn’t have doubted you could have a date, that was – I mean, you could have _anyone you want_.”

Silence.

Her words drop like stones between them, and she curses her quick tongue. She breathes in slowly. Tries to settle her face into neutrality, to pretend that she doesn’t notice the weight of her implication. 

The air seems too thick.

“Could I?” Bernie whispers, eyes dark and deep. 

Serena can’t bring herself to look away.

The silence stretches; doesn’t really feel like a silence at all. 

“Of course,” Serena says eventually, and curses her own voice for its softness.

Bernie breaks eye contact; turns to fiddle with the packet of her bacon roll.

“Okay,” she shrugs at last, and Serena wants to laugh, because that is just so… inadequate. So Bernie.

She remembers every promise she’s ever made to herself. Every promise she’s ever made to Bernie. Decides that the very least they both deserve, is for Serena to at least _try_ to fulfil the new role Bernie has assigned to her. For her to be a supportive, interested friend. 

Before she can second guess herself, Serena asks how Bernie’s date was. 

Bernie drops the roll. 

“I’m sorry?” She sounds incredulous.

Serena smiles blithely – hopes it doesn’t look as pained as it feels.

“The date. How was it?” 

She toys with the fraying hem of her shirt as she waits for an answer. Thinks she’ll have to go shopping soon, see if they have any more in cobalt blue in the House of Fraser sale. 

“It was… fine?” Bernie says eventually, as though she isn’t sure what Serena’s game is.

Serena isn’t even sure herself if she _has_ a game. She isn’t sure she can think clearly at all, when Bernie is so close to her. Isn’t sure whether she wants to hear _all about_ Bernie’s love life, or if she wants to hear about nothing _less_ than Bernie’s love life. She knows that she wants to run from something that frightens her, that excludes her, and taunts her with could haves and might have beens; but she can’t stand the idea of _not knowing_. She feels like she’s itching out of her skin with the contrariness of it all. 

Ideally, she thinks, she’d take a leaf out of the Berenice Wolfe book of classic avoidance skills, and ignore the problem; but she also knows that it’s not a problem that’s going to disappear. Bernie is going to date people. And she might not like it – and she might not like _them_ – but that isn’t her decision to make. 

So she pushes harder.

“Well, what was her name?” Serena asks jovially. “I assume it was a her?”

Bernie shifts uncomfortably. “Serena, I don’t know why you’re –"

“Well, that’s what friends do, isn’t it?” Serena interrupts. 

Bernie stares at her. “Jeanette,” she says at last. “Her name is Jeanette.”

Serena notes the use of the present tense. As though Jeanette is an ongoing presence in Bernie’s life. She doesn’t like it one bit. Realises, in that moment, that intellectual acceptance of a fact is not quite the same as emotional acceptance, and doesn’t like that, either.

Something of her discomfiture must show on her face, because when she asks Bernie how long she’s been seeing this… _Jeanette_ , Bernie throws up her hands in disgust.

“I don’t know why you’re asking me all these questions!”

They stare at each other. Bernie seems to shake with adrenaline, knuckles white and clenched against the edge of her desk, and Serena wonders whether she’s pushed too far. Knows, really, that she’s over stepped.

“I’m just… interested,” she says, and knows that it sounds like a lie.

Bernie seems to take a moment to collect herself before she speaks again.

“Jason tells me you went to London this weekend?” A clumsy subject change – and Serena can tell that they both know it – but the message behind it is clear. Any discussion of Bernie’s own private life is now strictly closed. Serena is furious with herself. 

But she gives Bernie what she wants – will always give Bernie what she wants. Cracks into her pain au chocolat, and tells her all about the intricacies of the dinosaur bones in the natural history museum, the historical inaccuracies in the costuming in the production of Les Mis they managed to catch. Facts all courtesy of her darling nephew, obviously. Bernie’s face softens, as it always does at mention of Jason. 

Serena wonders what her face looks like when she talks about Jeanette – when she feels comfortable, talking about Jeanette. When Serena isn’t quizzing her about Jeanette. She thinks about that present tense: ‘her name is Jeanette;’ realises she has no idea how long Bernie has known her, or how she thinks of her, and realises that Bernie doesn’t think that’s information Serena _should_ know, anymore. 

She watches Bernie unwrap her bacon roll. Waits for her to – _ah, yes, there it is_ – open her top drawer and ferret out a one-use sachet of red sauce. Knows that she’s inevitably going to drip it onto her keyboard and try to wipe it up with the edge of the roll’s cellophane packet. She knows so much about Bernie, because she has _devoted_ so much to Bernie. But if Bernie has someone else to remember all these things for her now, well, Serena has to accept that. She _can_ accept that. She is 51 years old. She’s lived, she thinks, probably more than half her life; has watched the end of more lives than she’d like to count. She knows the world, and how it works; is under no illusions about what she deserves, or what is owed to her. _(Nothing.)_ She supposes that might make her a realist. She is, at least, _realistic_ , and she realises that she can’t allow herself to sit around waiting for Bernie Wolfe anymore. She wants to – by God, does she want to; wants to believe in the kind of transcendental love that can overcome all else, that can bring Bernie back to her. But sometimes, she knows, life doesn’t work out like that. We _don’t_ always get what we want, because we aren’t always what _other people_ want, and that’s just… the way of the world. 

Serena watches Bernie smile down at her phone screen; recognises that smile for what it is. Decides that she needs to let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: I am not a disillusioned 51 years old who's painfully conscious of the cold indifference of the universe (lol what a lie; I'm not 51, at least,) so Serena will obviously be getting her happy ending in a couple of chapters.  
> Don't worry, I'd never let you down!


	17. THE END

To begin with, Serena does not set out with the intention of meeting someone new. 

Why would she? Serena is not the kind of person who _needs_ someone. She is strong enough to stand alone, and more than content to do so. She is not afraid of it. She knows that settling into something she’s not absolutely sure about can do more harm than good – learned that lesson after her second go with Edward, and is privately ashamed that it took her more than one round with him to realise it.

The weeks pass, with a few more sightings of Bernie and Jeanette, but no more mention of it from Bernie herself. Serena supposes it’s becoming rather a silent elephant between them, but they’re getting along so well that she is loath to upset the applecart. She also doesn’t want to think about it _at all_ , until she is absolutely sure that she can do so without feeling the bottom drop out of her stomach.

Getting over Bernie is not an easy task – but her current unavailability makes it a necessary one.

So she takes a couple of extra shifts at work, and remembers just how much she loved her job, before ‘going to work’ just became synonymous with ‘seeing Bernie.’ She spends her free evenings with Jason, and her free weekends catching up with old friends she’s found herself neglecting recently. She remembers how much she enjoys their company, and promises to see them more often. She goes for post-work drinks with Ric and Sasha, with Morven and Raf, and even, on one memorable occasion, with Hanssen, who sips impassively at a glass of single malt before melting off into the night like some sort of giant, mysterious bat. 

Serena slowly but surely extricates Bernie from all the areas of her life she’d managed to worm her way into. She thinks she feels better for it – knows no good can come of waiting around for something that will never happen, enjoys the feeling of being proactive about it all. 

She is careful to leave a space for her, though.

Just in case.

//

When she is coaxed out of her house one Saturday night by an overeager and overbearing Sian, all Serena has in mind is a couple of drinks, a visit to the 80s bar in town, and maybe a stop off at the kebab shop on the way back, for old time’s sake. She wants to hear _Come on Eileen_ at least twice, and she wants a frivolous, silly cocktail with a curly straw, and she wants to get home without some less-than-chipper twenty-something throwing up on her shoes. She considers these asks to be small and easily attainable, and she knows, after thirty years of nights out in Holby, to set her bar low.

Sian, of course, has other ideas. 

Serena’s dreams of a naff but pleasant evening bopping along to classic 80s new-wave devolves into 2-for-a-fiver jagerbombs at a new nightclub opening by 12:00am, as only a night out with Sian can. By 12:43am, she’s three sheets to the wind and chatting up the barman. Just shy of 1:15am, Sian is whispering encouragement in her ear – _‘you need to get back on the horse Serena, just give it a go Serena, do it for me Serena, I hate to see you so sad’_ \- and steering her towards a very attractive looking woman in her late 40s, who seems to be about as uncomfortable among the pulsing lights and pulsating bodies as Serena had been, about… oh… four shots ago. After a conversation she won’t remember, but is sure was really quite riveting, Serena and the attractive woman – she wants to say Elaine – have somehow found their way onto – well, each other, actually. Serena is having the time of her life. She doesn’t think she’s snogged anyone this voraciously in a night club since she was 22, and she’d rather ruined it that time with what Sian still rather grandly refers to as _The Unfortunate Nose Vomiting Incident_. On this occasion, she has to be peeled away by Sian, who, Serena knows, doesn’t really give a shit about what kind of poor decisions she might make under the influence of several dubiously coloured and very potent alcoholic liquids, but who probably does want to split the hefty taxi fare home. 

The pretty lady smiles at her hazily as they separate. Her eyes are very blue, and Serena can’t help but notice how _unlike_ Bernie’s they are. She likes them all the same – thinks they’re clear and honest and shine like cut crystal. Not like Bernie’s eyes, which are brown and warm and sticky like molasses. She gets stuck in Bernie’s eyes. They’re rich and soft and she wants to curl up and sleep in them. She doesn’t think she could sleep in eyes this blue.

Serena feels as though she’s floating inside her own body. It’s calming. She imagines swimming up to her own eyes and peeking through them like portals on a ship. Like she’s a mermaid, floating serenely in the ocean. It is the outside world that is small to her, and the space _inside her_ that is vast.

She’s not sure whether it’s the influence of whatever was in that last fishbowl, or the pretty lady - _Elaine,_ she reminds herself sternly, _don’t call her the pretty lady to her face, she won’t like it_ – but Serena feels much better than she has in weeks.

She thinks her face might be smiling of its own accord.

“Sian,” she whispers to her friend, and rests her head affectionately against her shoulder. She thinks she can hear the waves swishing against her skull. 

“Yes?” 

“Would you mind terribly getting this nice lady’s telephone number for me? I have to go and throw up.” 

She trots off in the direction of the loos. Hopes there isn’t a line. She hates a line. She hears Sian making her excuses for her, and offering to put Serena’s phone number into Elaine’s phone. 

_Such a good friend. Why don’t I see more of Sian?_

Sian comes and fishes her out of the toilets 15 minutes later, takes her to the kebab shop, and delivers her to her door safe and sound. Serena crawls into bed alone, still nursing half her tray of cheesy chips, and already preparing herself for the nursing of an out of this world hangover. 

//

She wakes up feeling greasy and slippery, in the way only a severe case of hangover sweats can create. She’s not sure, but she thinks her teeth might actually be sweating; and it is in these moments that she remembers _exactly_ why she doesn’t see more of Sian. She lies very still. Stares at a cobweb hanging from the lampshade, and tries to breathe deeply. She thinks she can feel her heart beat against her ribcage; she’s _sure_ she can feel it pounding in both temples, and at the base of her skull, and actually, oddly enough, in the muscles of her forearms. It seems slightly arrhythmic, and she wonders whether she should be concerned.

_How much did I drink?_

She feels her throat beginning to close up, and barrels to the bathroom as quickly as her shaky legs will carry her.

Most of the morning is spent feeling very sorry for herself indeed; and she can’t quite stop herself from thinking that _Bernie_ would never let her get this drunk. She never needed to do anything this drastic to have fun with Bernie. But Bernie has other people to do fun things with now, and that’s _fine_.

_Fine._

She rolls over, miserably, as though a change in position might engender a change in thought process. 

When Serena’s phone vibrates with a message - _hi, it’s Elaine from last night, I wondered if you’d like to get coffee next week some time?_ \- she perks up. Taps out a reply in the affirmative, and finally - _finally_ \- crawls out of bed.

//

Elaine is wonderful. 

She can paint, and sing, and has a working knowledge of three separate European languages. She’s sharp, sometimes to the point of abrasiveness, and has a mind so quick, and so witty, that Serena often feels like an overawed and delighted child gurgling up at an unfathomably shiny and brilliant new toy from her play mat whenever she looks at her. She is the main attraction of every conversation, of every party, of every room that she enters. She is a blazing and brilliant force of nature, and Serena can’t quite believe that she’s picked _her_ , of all the women in the world. 

Bernie never blazes in the way that Elaine blazes. Bernie’s strength and charm, though bright, is quiet, and warm, and slow. Her tongue is never quite as sharp, though her words are often as forceful. Bernie runs in deep and impenetrable waters; Elaine is the white and frothing rapids splitting over the rocks. They’re nothing alike in so many ways – yet they’re alike in all the ways that matter to Serena. They are composed of all the same core qualities, and the longer Serena knows Elaine, the more she begins to think that she could, one day, love her in the same way she loves – _loved?_ – Bernie.

Sometimes Elaine comes to pick her up from work, if she herself has finished early. It’s the kind of thoughtfulness Serena has always longed for – the kind of thoughtfulness she never received from Edward, or from Robbie. And because it’s such an artless sort of kindness, Serena knows, she should maybe repay it. Should show Elaine that she, too, is invested in this relationship, and invite her into the hospital to wait for her in her office, or take her for drinks with AAU after work. Thinks that maybe she should introduce her to Raf, or Ric, because they’re her friends, and that’s what one does, isn’t it? If they’re serious about someone? She knows it is. Knows it’s what she should be doing. Instead though, she finds herself making excuses. _No one is going to Albie’s tonight, maybe next time; no, the ward is very busy at the moment, you’d best just stay in the car; I need to run some errands up on Keller before I leave, there’s no point in dragging you with me._ She tells herself it’s because she wants to keep Elaine to herself – wants to hoard her away and marvel at her in peace.

Truthfully, Serena has a small, nagging suspicion at the back of her mind that this evasiveness is perhaps something to do with Bernie. 

//

Surgery runs late one Thursday, as surgeries are wont to do on AAU. Serena, against her better judgement, has to send Elaine a text. She tells her to go and wait in her office, and regrets sending it almost immediately. Doesn’t want Elaine to meet Bernie, and wonders why she should care. Why should she care who Elaine meets? What she does now is none of Bernie’s business at all, really, and that was Bernie’s own decision. Not hers.

Still, she quickens her pace, and hopes she can be out the door before Bernie goes to start on her paperwork.

She finds Elaine quite at home, settled in her office chair. Serena watches her as she absentmindedly straightens a pile of charts on her desk, and feels suddenly resentful. Wants to kick her out of her office, and out of her space, and never let her come back here again. It’s irrational, she knows. She invited her here, and she’s really very fond of her indeed. But she can’t help but feel that she’s… tainting something. She’s away chattering a mile a minute at a bemused looking Bernie, and an absolutely enchanted Raf. It’s the first time Serena has failed to find her charming. Thinks, as she watches Bernie blink incredulously, that she just seems a little bit too loud. A little bit too much. 

When Elaine finally catches sight of Serena, she smiles. Serena loves her smile – thinks it’s really quite unlike any smile she’s ever seen. She has rows of neat little white teeth, and she bares them in a sort of loving snarl. It’s saved from an appearance of aggression by the way her cheeks dimple, and Serena finds it altogether enchanting, if a little dangerous looking. Despite herself, she can’t help but smile back. She will always smile at beauty.

Bernie clears her throat, and Serena twitches. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name,” she says cautiously, and clicks her ballpoint in and out. In and out. It doesn’t sound as though that’s the question she’s really asking. Her eyes flick from Elaine, to Serena, and back again. Nervously. Serena thinks she looks like a puppy waiting for a blow.

“This is Elaine,” Serena jumps in, before anyone can put their foot in it. “My – well, I suppose you’d call her my partner.” 

Bernie looks at her. Looks back at Serena. Seems to shudder a little under the weight of her words.

“Oh.” She says eventually. 

Serena feels the muscles in her neck begin to throb. Realises that she’s tensing, as though she’s expecting some sort of backlash. She forces herself to relax and go to Elaine. She stands by her side, and feels a little off kilter about it.

Elaine wiggles her fingers in a wave. She seems bored; often seems bored, when she’s juiced her audience of the last of their interest. She glances at Serena with an arch expression, and Serena is reminded of a particularly haughty cat she’d had as a girl. Bernie continues to stare.

“I’ll meet you in the car,” Elaine says eventually, when it becomes clear that Bernie isn’t going to respond. Serena thinks she sneers slightly on her way out – but thinks that maybe she’d sneer too, if she was faced with this kind of odd and weighted silence from a stranger. Thinks almost simultaneously that Bernie _wouldn’t._ That Bernie has a unique sort of kindness to her that few other people possess. 

Serena smiles weakly at Bernie, who hasn’t moved from her spot against the wall. She can’t quite work out what Bernie’s face is doing. A hundred different and almost imperceptible micro-expressions flicker across it like a film reel, and it feels invasive to try and interpret them all. She doesn’t try.

“Partner as in… as in girlfriend?” Bernie says eventually. Pathetically.

Serena feels her insides curl in discomfort.

“Well – I think I’m a little old to be considered a girl,” she says automatically – evasively – and slips her arms into her jacket as she leaves. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The door handle slips out of her hands on her first try – too eager to leave, too quick and jerky with nerves - but she manages to get it open on her second. Waves brightly – too brightly to look genuine, she knows – at Bernie, and sets off down the corridor.

“Serena!”

She hears the squeak of Bernie’s trainers as she jogs after her. Turns to face her, though she wants to do almost anything else. Would rather keep walking all the way home, alone. Would rather run from the building, and forget that Elaine had ever been here at all, and never let her come into contact with Bernie again. 

“Jeanette and I,” Bernie pants. “We broke up.” 

She looks panicked, and wired, and strung too tightly, and Serena doesn’t really know how to respond. Feels as though all she can see is those big brown eyes staring at her. Isn’t sure why Bernie is telling her this, and thinks that Bernie almost looks like she might cry. 

“I have to go,” she says eventually, because Bernie is not her responsibility anymore. “We’ll talk tomorrow?”

Bernie nods, helplessly, and retreats back into the office.

Serena can’t do anything but keep walking.

//

Bernie behaves oddly for days after meeting Elaine and Serena can’t work out why. Refuses to work out why, actually, because that’s a whole new can of worms she doesn’t want to open. She likes Elaine. She likes being with Elaine, and she likes looking at Elaine, and she doesn’t want to give her up without good reason. She’s not so head over heels in love with Bernie Wolfe as to believe that she’s irreplaceable. 

She thinks about it, as she watches Bernie glower her way through her ward rounds. Watches every tense half-pout of Bernie’s thin lips, and the way Morven quickly swerves behind an empty bed to avoid her, and decides she’s had enough of Bernie’s uncharacteristic unprofessionalism. 

“Ms Wolfe, may I speak to you in the office for a moment, please?” 

Serena doesn’t wait for an answer before she starts walking, but Bernie follows without complaint. 

Serena shuts the door, and gestures to the guest chairs by her desk. 

Bernie sits like a marionette who’s had her strings cut.

“Is there a problem?” Serena asks. She thinks she knows the answer. Wants to see if Bernie can admit to it herself.

Bernie has the audacity to laugh, but it sounds strange – a hacking sort of bark. It makes Serena wince.

“No. No problem. Not at all.”

Serena looks at her, sitting there and folded in on herself, and it’s as though she’s seeing her for the first time. Realises that Bernie isn’t sulking – she’s just… sad.

“Bernie,” she tries again in a gentler tone. “What’s wrong. Please.”

Bernie shakes her head. Serena thinks her lower lip is beginning to tremble slightly. 

“Please – tell me – aren’t we friends?” Serena tries, and Bernie sucks in a breath as though she’s been struck. Stares at Serena, as though to use their friendship as leverage was a kind of betrayal.

“Yes,” she says at last, and straightens in her chair. 

“Well then,” Serena says, and shuffles her chair closer. “Fess up.”

“Serena… it’s not my place – I don’t want to say anything that I – that I have no _right_ to say.”

Perhaps it’s the amount of time she’s been spending with no-nonsense Elaine recently; Serena has no time for Bernie’s usual, rambling equivocation. 

“Spit it out Bernie, I mean it. You’re disrupting the atmosphere. Morven’s avoiding you, Raf thinks you’re being a prize prat, and the nurses keep bringing _me_ your results because they’re too afraid to bring them to you directly. I won’t have AAU running at less than optimum efficiency just because you have a bee in your bonnet about something.”

Bernie looks up at her with those big brown eyes. _Those big, warm, brown eyes, that are soft and kind, and not at all like Elaine’s_.

“I ruined everything,” she says eventually, so softly that Serena struggles to hear her.

“What?”

Bernie seems to struggle with something for a moment. “Please, Serena, don’t ask me. You’ll hate me.”

Serena has to fight the urge to tell her that she’s being ridiculous – that she could never hate Bernie.

“Bernie. Come on now. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Bernie studies her for a moment, and Serena fights the urge to squirm. She always feels as though Bernie knows a little too much of her. As though she can see all of her. She finds it exposing at a time like this, and has to turn away. 

“You really want to know?” Bernie says at last, as though she’s resigning herself to something.

“I really do.” Serena focuses her gaze on her desk. Can feel the weight of Bernie’s presence behind her, and tries desperately to ignore it. 

Bernie stands.

“Fine. _Fine_. I don’t like Elaine. I can’t stand her. I feel terrible about it, because it’s nothing that she’s done, or not done. It’s her, and it’s you, and it’s her and you as a unit of two, and I have absolutely no right to question it, or to hate it, because it was all my own… _idiotic_ idea in the first place!” 

Serena makes to jump in, and stop her right there. This isn’t a conversation that she wants to have in the middle of a shift, and it isn’t a conversation she wants to have forced Bernie into having, however inadvertently; but Bernie ploughs on, apparently more than willing to talk now the floodgates have been opened.

“And it’s really – it’s ridiculous, actually, because I liked Jeanette, and I could have made a go of it with Jeanette and been quite happy – she actually dumped me, you know, nothing personal, she was just too busy – and I’ve built this entire life away from you, and I don’t _need_ you like I used to – but I still… _want_ you.” Bernie laughs, and it sounds more like a sob. “How… stupid is that? I just… want you.” 

Serena looks at Bernie, and she thinks many things. She is furious, for about half a second, that Bernie has changed her mind about them, again, just as Serena has started to move on. She thinks about Elaine, who she likes a lot for virtues and qualities of her own, but who she could never like _quite as much_ as Bernie. She thinks about all she and Bernie have been through, together and separately, and realises that Bernie had been right. They _were_ too reliant on each other, and they did need to take a step back to reassess themselves. She realises that she’s _tired._ She’s tired of all this angst, and drama. She’s 51 years old, and she doesn’t need Bernie, either – but she _wants_ Bernie; and Bernie wants her. 

“It’s so simple, isn’t it?” Serena says at last. “We’ve learned to live without each other. We’ve learned that we can exist without each other, and be perfectly content.”

Bernie looks stricken, and Serena realises that she’s getting the completely wrong idea about the direction of this conversation. 

“No! No, wait a minute. Let me just… I put you on this pedestal, when we met; and I don’t think – I mean, it _couldn’t_ have been the real you. It wasn’t sustainable, to be as flawless as I thought you were. And then you went to Ukraine, and you left me, and everything sort of toppled down around me, and I didn’t deal with it well. I still didn’t understand it, because I was so sure that you’d deceived me somehow, or tricked me maliciously, and of course, you hadn’t. You were just human, and afraid, and I didn’t - couldn’t - realise it, because I was… so in love with you, that it was blinding. But then somehow, after your accident, you seemed to have this idealised idea of me, too – of what I could mean to you, and I wanted to be it so badly. But however wonderful that life was, it wasn’t _real_. And it wouldn’t be like that, and if we do – do this, it won’t be like that. You know that, don’t you?” 

Serena needs to check – needs to know that they’re on the same page for the first time in months.

Bernie nods earnestly. “I do know that. But… I also want you to know that those months when I thought we were married-“ she pauses, and Serena realises that it’s the first time she’s said it out loud. “When I wanted to _believe_ we were married, were some of the happiest of my life. I know – I know they weren’t real, and I understand that they – well, that they won’t ever be real. But they also let me believe that… I could be _happy_ , in a way I think I lost sight of, for a while. And maybe I could be happy with anybody. But I’d _like_ to be happy with you?”

It trails off into a question – as it should, Serena thinks. She’s tempted to let Bernie dangle for a moment. Thinks briefly about poor Elaine again, who she likes very much, but who’s never going to be able to squeeze herself into the pre-existing Bernie-shaped hole in Serena’s heart – and who shouldn’t have to, because she’s really quite brilliant in her own right, and deserves someone who has room for _her_. Thinks about herself, and Edward, and Robbie, and how profoundly and uniquely rubbish they had both been for her. Thinks about Bernie, and how she’s not like that at all. How Bernie has forced her to grow, at a time in life when she thought she had no more growing left to do. 

“I’m seeing a therapist, you know,” Bernie says. She seems proud, and Serena’s heart turns over in her chest. 

“You don’t need to sell yourself to me, you know,” she says, because she’s not sure what kind of response Bernie is looking for.

“I know,” Bernie says quite seriously. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.”

“I’m glad.” Serena smiles; and she is. She wants Bernie to do things for Bernie. 

“I just wanted you to know that I’m – well, I don’t know. Digging through some stuff that I probably should have dug through sooner.”

“I’m really very pleased for you.”

“I’m engaging in… open dialogue. No more secrets.”

“No more secrets,” Serena agrees, because Bernie looks so hopeful and happy, and she can’t resist it. Can't resist her.

“You know,” Bernie says, as she drifts a little closer to Serena. “I feel as though… maybe we know each other better than we’ve ever known anybody. I feel like I know all of you, Serena. All of you, and the truth of you.” 

Serena thinks of all the more unsavoury parts of herself she has tried to hide from Bernie. She thinks about how willing she is to be cruel, once she’s tasted blood in the water. How willing she is to twist words and language and people to get her own way. How quick she was to turn on Bernie, once she felt slighted by her. She’s seized with the sudden urge to run. Instead, she reaches out a hand to Bernie.

“And do you – do you like it?” Serena asks, and feels as foolish and hesitant as she had in the days after their first kiss.

“Of course I do. I love you.”

Serena feels her heart soar, and cannot quite believe, that after all that has happened, it can be this simple. She doesn’t want to question it. She doesn’t want to question anything, ever again, for as long as she lives. She’s on her feet before she realises it. Bernie follows her, her smile so wide it almost splits her face in two.

The stand together as equals, and Bernie takes her hand.

“Albie’s?”

“I’d be delighted.”

THE END/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be totally honest; this chapter was originally – very loosely – planned out across maybe two or three chapters, and it was all going to develop in a very healthy and non-toxic way; but I’ve really lost interest in Berena and I just wanted to wash my hands of it as quickly and expediently as possible.   
> You've all been so overwhelmingly lovely about this story, and I hope you don't feel like this final chapter is a total let down because it's condensed or rushed - I know I've sort of ruined my own fic at the eleventh hour by messing up the pacing and leaving out chunks of the narrative, and I'm honestly annoyed at myself already - but I just don't have the enthusiasm or energy to write something I no longer feel anything for. I mean, the whole Berena thing turned out to be a total let down, let’s not mince words, and I feel as though I’ve woken from a very vivid fever dream in which I devoted a year of my life to a really terrible second rate BBC soap opera just because there were pretty ladies kissing. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t understand why I did it. I can’t really even imagine feeling the way I know I did about it. The lure of sapphic activity was too strong. Lesbian siren call.   
> Anyway, I suppose I just wanted to reiterate how grateful I am for the interest you've shown in this story, and how grateful I am for every single lovely comment you've left, and I don't want you to think I didn't appreciate it, because I really do. I feel like a terrible TV exec who's sent out a total flat balloon of a series finale, and I am very sorry for it, and I have tried to wrap it up as best I can, but this fic is a bit of an albatross around my neck.   
> Thanks for reading my humble garbage fan fiction, you're all talented and kind and wonderful, and I hope you continue to produce wonderful things.


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